


The Price of Feeling Better

by Vitreous_Humor



Series: Set Fire to Our Bed [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Bad BDSM Etiquette, Begging, Blindfolds, Bottom Crowley (Good Omens), Caning, Crying, Depression, Dirty Talk, Embarrassment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Exposure, Falconry, Fear of Abandonment, Fortune Cookies, Groping, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Hand Strapping, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Objectification, Possessive Behavior, Scene Gone Wrong, Self-Harm, Spanking, Surprise Body Modifaction, Teasing, Threat of Gags, Trauma Reenactment, Wing Grooming, Wingfic, bad kink, execution-hanging, past captivity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-05-19 20:45:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19363870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: “I woke up like this because I had been plucking out feathers in my sleep,” Crowley said miserably. “And when I'm not paying attention, sometimes when I'm awake.”“And when you are paying attention?”“Sometimes then too.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授翻/translation】The Price of Feeling Better|救捞的代价](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20279887) by [Echy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echy/pseuds/Echy)



It started after Armageddon failed to.

It should have been something approaching a perfect time, and it mostly, it was. Heaven and Hell had pulled back to their Cold War footing and this time, they were regarding Earth in general and their former agents in particular with the care reserved for a hostile nation with more firepower than previously supposed. He and Aziraphale were testing out some new ground between them, which felt at once like the old ground and like something terribly exciting and sometimes almost painfully good as well.

They spent more time together, and time apart only seemed to make them more eager to see one another. Crowley never got tired of seeing Aziraphale's face light up when they spotted each other across a crowded street whether they had planned to meet or not. Crowley had to admit, sometimes he put himself in the angel's path when he knew he'd be out and about. Partly it was to see the delight on Aziraphale's face, and partly...

Well.

They had been going to _burn_ him.

Crowley didn't have nightmares; he liked to say that nightmares had him. That was just demon propaganda though. Even when he was awake, the vision would seep into the edges of his consciousness, tinting everything in phosphorous yellow and obliterating the ambient noise with a roar.

It was a pillar of flame and those bloody... those fucking... those _angels,_ because there was no greater obscenity than what they actually were, were going to chuck Aziraphale into it as if he were a bit of trash.

Of course Crowley knew how that really went. It wasn't Aziraphale, it was him, and oh, he had made the big purple-eyed bastard _jump._

He replayed that memory over and over again, and though it helped, it didn't eradicate the skin-crawling, gut-wrenching idea of Aziraphale, who after all was _only_ an angel, being obliterated and creating a world with a gap in it, a place where Aziraphale should have been and _wasn't,_ and that was when Crowley usually gave up and went to put himself in Aziraphale's path, wherever he was in the city. He needed that bright smile across the thoroughfare, the voice that made the entire world seem not just right but happy.

Crowley told himself he was fine, and he was, for a little while. Then three months after the Armageddon't, he woke up from a dead sleep with his wings out and a dark feather in his hand.

 _Aw hell, back on my rubbish,_ he thought disconsolately.

The feather in his hand was fully formed. He guessed it had been on the verge of molting anyway. Crowley's hand tightened around the feather, crushing it, and then with a touch, he set it on fire and let it burn to white ash in his hand. The acrid smell woke him up a little further, making him scowl.

He would be fine today, he thought. He didn't need to go find out where Aziraphale was wandering -Piccadilly, it seemed- and instead, he could just stay home and do whatever he liked.

Of course the problem was that there was nothing _to_ do anymore. Aziraphale was fine, he certainly didn't need to go tempting more souls for Hell, and even his plants were blooming in terrified perfection.

“You're all terrible,” he said unconvincingly. “Terrible. Just awful. Unloved. No one could ever love you lot. Um.”

He sprayed them down, gave them a little extra blood meal, and went for a walk. London was finally cooling down from summer. The fresh air was good, but there was a dampness to it as well that told him winter was on the way. He wasn't a fan of winter, and the weeks and months that it would take to get through the dreary days until one arrived at the brilliant oasis of the holidays was unbearable. Crowley walked anyway. For old times sake he turned a street full of meters over to empty and attempted in a rather distracted way to kick a pigeon. The pigeon flew off with a furious coo, and he was left muttering a _sorry, you know how it is_ to no one in particular.

He went home, told himself he felt better, and then the next day, woke up with another feather in his hand.

***

They were over at Crowley's flat, Aziraphale arriving with the smell of rain on his jacket and a bottle of something uncommonly good to share. Crowley took the angel by the lapels and briefly just stood in the doorway with his cheek pressed against Aziraphale's, breathing in the scent of rain and books and tweed, feeling something in him relax that had been tense for a while. Aziraphale tolerated it for a few moments and then cleared his throat.

“You ought to let me in, dear, your neighbors will stare.”

“They can stare for all of me,” Crowley said with a grin. “Serves them right. In the old days, we would take out their eyes if they were offended.”

“I believe He said for them to do it themselves, actually...”

“We can help. That's what your lot likes, isn't it? Helping?” He let Aziraphale in, locking the door behind him with an obscure sense of relief.

“You're my lot now,” Aziraphale said indulgently. “What do _you_ say?”

“I say we help them straight off a cliff if they can't leave us alone.”

The bottle was better than good, and they lounged on a couch that Crowley wasn't sure he had had the day before, stretched out, softly warm and heads singing with a fluorescent light buzz.

God, _this_ had been what he had needed. A few more nights like this, and he'd be right as rain. Crowley lay with his face smashed into the cushion, legs bent at the knee and feet kicked up. Why didn't he keep this couch around all the time? It was damned comfy. Aziraphale's fingers dug lightly into his scalp, likely turfing his hair in all directions, but it felt so good.

Crowley was barely aware when his wings shook out. There was a sound like a shush of silk, and then he felt their weight over him, first stretched to their full height and almost brushing the ceiling, and then falling down lazily to drape over his back.

“If I smack you in the face, 'm sorry,” he said lazily.

He was almost drifting off when he realized that Aziraphale hadn't responded. He glanced up and saw that at some point, Aziraphale had sobered himself up, and he was staring at Crowley with a puzzled frown on his face.

“Whasit?”

“Crowley, have you looked at your wings lately?”

As a matter of fact, he had been avoiding it, but he had been feeling the difference for a while. There was a subtle unevenness to them, and a scratchy sensation under even the healthy feathers. There were pinfeathers growing in, and at least one bare spot on the left one that he knew about.

“Probably molting early,” he muttered, trying to pull the wings back in. He managed it with one, but Aziraphale's hand came out and closed over the other, preventing it from doing more than trembling a little. Crowley hissed a little in surprise. Angels didn't touch each other's wings without express permission and some serious negotiation. Demons were another story, but that was a book that Crowley closed ages ago. It wasn't even the first time Aziraphale had touched his wings, but it was a shock.

“Beg your pardon,” Aziraphale said absently. “But just _look_ at this...”

“I'd rather you didn't!”

Something about his voice made Aziraphale pull his hand back, a slight blush coming over his cheeks. Crowley lurched up into a sitting position, and the other wing came out again to match the first.

“Here, will you turn around?” Aziraphale asked. “I really think I ought to take a look.”

Crowley for some reason didn't sober himself up. The heat of the alcohol was keeping him at least somewhat insulated from whatever Aziraphale was after, and he was loath to lose it. Instead, he focused on the angel's tone and turned around. There was a soft whump when he caught Aziraphale in the face with a wing tip, and he hid a grin. You didn't forget 6000 years of being a demon in a blink, after all.

Aziraphale made a soft tcching sound.

“Darling, do you mind if I touch?”

“Call me darling again, and you can do whatever you like,” Crowley said. He wanted it to come out flirtatious, but there was just a hint of something else underneath it, something he didn't care to look at.

“Of course, my darling,” Aziraphale said warmly, and Crowley felt a low and not altogether pleasant heat from how much he liked it.

Crowley let his eyes drift shut as Aziraphale smoothed out his feathers, massaging the base of his wings up to the bend and then rifling the primary flight feathers slightly. Some spots were a little tender with new growth, but the angel was more than gentle.

 _He has such nice thick hands,_ Crowley thought hazily. _Like a baker's, all broad and strong, but white with flour. Like he never worked a day in his life..._

“All right. That's three missing primaries on the right, two on the left, and some significant number of missing secondaries on both. The down underneath feels scanty too...Darling, what's going on?”

“Molting,” Crowley muttered, only to hear Aziraphale snort.

“As if I don't know when you molt. It's not molting.”

“How d'you know when I molt?”

“We were the only angel and demon on the planet for a very long time. We've been having our molts at the same time for better than five thousand years.”

Crowley twisted around to stare, blinking in confusion.

“Wha-? We never...”

“Always,” Aziraphale said firmly. “Five thousand years. I kept track. Would you please sober up, Crowley? I want to talk with you.”

“Call me darling again,” he said, and something curious flickered behind Aziraphale's eyes, there and gone again. He might have been able to catch it if he were sober, but of course he wasn't.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said. “Because you're _my_ darling, and I'll call you that until the end of the world. Now... please?”

“Fine.” Crowley said, concentrating for a moment. Sobriety felt cold and oddly naked, and this time he did pull his wings back in, turning to face Aziraphale

“It's really nothing, angel-”

“It's not,” Aziraphale countered calmly. “Don't lie to me, please.”

“Demon. Comes with the territory,” Crowley muttered, but it felt false even when he said it. Aziraphale's sharp look told him that the angel knew it too.

“Do you want it to? In _our_ territory, I mean.”

“Dirty, angel,” Crowley groaned. “You know I don't.”

It was some kind of angel superpower, he was convinced. It was better than thinking about how much he wanted to keep that disappointment or that sadness out of Aziraphale's voice, how much he'd rather be hearing other things.

“All right then. Don't lie to me. Tell me something true instead.”

“All right. I love you.”

He held it up like an offering, basking in the warmth of Aziraphale's sudden smile. It was like the sun coming out, and it was better than the real sun because it would never go out, not for him. He knew that like he knew his own name from before the Fall, like he knew every cobblestone in Whitechapel.

“I love you so very much,” Aziraphale said, but there was a waiting quality to his voice.

“Another?” Crowley said sadly, and Aziraphale nodded.

He thought for a moment, fingernail digging into the edge of the cushion.

“I wore the coat with the tartan collar out today. I liked it. Thought of you.”

“I saw a Bentley in the street two days ago, and I thought of you.”

“Wait, was it as nice as-”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ah. That's fine then. Do you want another?”

“If you please.”

It was how Aziraphale made it easier on him. He hadn't just been being brattish earlier. Demons lied like they breathed, and Crowley was mostly no different. Aziraphale's calm acceptance and patient exchange soothed him, reminded him that the terrible destructive power of truth was utterly obliterated in the face of a love like his for Aziraphale's and Aziraphale's for him.

Two more exchanges, and Crowley drew a deep breath.

“I was just sort of... I woke up like this.”

Aziraphale looked alarmed.

“That's not _normal_ -”

“I woke up like this because I had been plucking out feathers in my sleep,” he finished miserably. “And when I'm not paying attention, sometimes when I'm awake.”

He kept his head down, concentrating on the frayed buttonhole on Aziraphale's velvet waistcoat.

“And when you're paying attention?”

“Sometimes then too.”

There was a slight snapping sound, and Crowley looked up to see Aziraphale's wings opening up. He couldn't help but notice that Aziraphale was certainly not in molt. His wings were broad, strong and perfect, the feathers sleek and close-set, the pure white vibrant. It only made his own wings look dustier and positively ragged in comparison. There was a forward tilt to them, the primaries spread as if to make him look bigger. It was aggressive and protective, instinct, Crowley realized, but it was hard to appreciate it right this moment.

“Don't boast,” he muttered, and Aziraphale looked appalled,.

“Oh, darling, I'm sorry...”

He pulled them back neatly, and Crowley saw with a fresh pang how easily they moved, how stiff his had been by comparison.

“It's all right,” he said ungraciously. “No problem at all.”

“Liar,” Aziraphale said with a sigh. “Crowley... when did this all begin?

“Just a few months ago.” It wasn't a lie, not exactly. He would tell Aziraphale another truth at some point to make up for it

***

It started when he thought that the angel understood.

He thought that they were friends, that if he made a request like _this_ that Aziraphale would surely honor it. They had known each other for thousands of years, and the Arrangement had been going on for several hundred. Crowley thought he had more than held up his end of the bargain, behaved impeccably on top of it, and Satan forgive him if he thought that entitled him to some consideration.

 _He knows that I'm not just some random demon looking for penny-souls and handouts,_ Crowley thought indignantly. _He should know that I wouldn't ask if it wasn't really really important. If it wasn't something I couldn't get for myself._

And then there had been that bit about _fraternizing,_ and oh, apparently _that_ was what they were calling it in Heaven now? Was _that_ what Heaven would see it as, especially that one weekend they had spent down at Brighton Beach? Or that one strange night in Edinburgh? Hell had a different word (as well as a few hand gestures) for what _that_ was, and it certainly was not fraternizing.

Honestly. _Fraternizing_.

Crowley knew that if he waited a few years, the sting would die down. He would, as he so inevitably did, begin to wonder if the angel had a point, or if he had made a bit of a prick of himself. Perhaps he could try a different tack, or properly explain this time or let Aziraphale properly explain to him. It would all work out.

But that would take years, and he was angry _now._

His wings came out, and before he knew it, there were two fresh feathers in his hand and a sharp pain that quickly faded. He saw that one of the feathers had a few drops of blood at the base. It didn't hurt as much as it would have if it had been a blood feather, but it was hardly pleasant.

The anger ebbed, and Crowley sighed. He was still upset, but the hard sharp edge of it was a little less apt to cut now. He looked down at the feathers in his hand with a mixture of embarrassment and relief.

 _Haven't done that for a while,_ he thought and then didn't think about it any more.

***

Crowley could tell that Aziraphale was a bit at a loss. He stayed at Crowley's flat that night and into the next morning. At odd moments, Crowley could feel Aziraphale's eyes on him, wary as if expecting to see Crowley tearing out his flight feathers and scattering them to the high winds outside his window.

Crowley wanted to snap at him for that look on his face. The only thing that kept him from doing it was that having Aziraphale's eyes on him did seem to help in some way. It felt like a weight that settled on him, that prevented him from reaching back and picking at the tender soft down under the heavier straight feathers. It unsettled him briefly that he kept reaching back. It had turned into a habit again while he hadn't been paying attention.

“Will you come back to the shop with me tonight?” Aziraphale asked towards evening. His voice was too casual, and Crowley hissed softly between his teeth.

“Angel, if you want to go home, then _go._ I'm not going to pluck myself bald because you're not here to watch me like a blessed baby!”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, and Crowley cut him off with a sharp motion.

“And _don't_ tell me you need help around the shop. You never, ever do, and that little _help wanted_ sign of yours is just a terrible trick you play on the college students.”

Aziraphale smiled a little.

“It rather makes it look more natural.”

“It rather breaks the hearts of youngsters who think they have a shot at a job in this wintertime economy is what it does,” Crowley snorted, but he felt a little better. The tension that had been brewing between his shoulder blades lessened slightly.

“All right. I won't tell you that I need your help. What if I tell you that I would feel better if you came home with me tonight?”

“I told you, I don't need-”

“No,” said Aziraphale sharply. “This is not about your need. This is about mine.”

Crowley blinked. Aziraphale looked searchingly at his face, softening a little.

“I want you with me,” he said quietly. “I don't want to be alone right now, because if I am, my mind will be overly-occupied with worry. That worry would be alleviated if you came home with me, and I would like that very much.”

“Again, dirty, angel,” Crowley informed him, and Aziraphale shrugged, the ghost of a smile on his face.

“Just the truth. You may do with it what you like.”

Of course he could. The angel had a way of making a choice sound like no choice at all, and Crowley shook his head. One day, if he spent enough time with Aziraphale, maybe he would learn to use the truth like a velvet bag weighted down with a brick too.

“Let me get my jacket,” he said with a sigh, and Aziraphale smiled at him, reaching over to squeeze his hand.

“Take all the time you need,” he said, generous now that he had got his own way, and honestly. There were dukes in Hell and cherubs in Heaven less smug.

Crowley took some pleasure in conjuring up a stack of tabloids to read in Aziraphale's dignified front room, but the angel, after making sure he was settled with some quite decadent cocoa and a wing chair pulled from sometime in the 1890s, went about his business.

Over the top of his paper, Crowley watched Aziraphale as he bustled around the shop, made a few calls and drew down a few volumes from their places on the shelves. Around noon, there was a knock on the door and a rather strapping lad came in with a thick stack of books for Mr. Fell.

“Oh, and I saw that you had a help wanted sign up...”

“Position's been filled, I'm afraid,” Aziraphale said brightly. “Just a few moments ago, and I've not had a chance to take the sign down yet. Good luck, however, you seem a likely sort. I'm sure there's some job for you, shepherd or charcoal burner or something like that...'

“Do you know any that are hiring?” asked the young man hopefully, but Aziraphale was already turning towards his books, lost in that special world that kept the commoners at bay with a velvet rope and a very burly person with a large stick on guard.

“No, they're not,” Crowley said with a sigh. “ Come over here, you have a bit of time before your next deliveries, don't you? Let's see if we can get you sorted.”

Crowley sat with the young man, whose named turned out to be Kareem and who kept looking around the shop with a kind of worshipful pleasure it was likely just as well that Aziraphale didn't see. He tried to interest the young man in pharmaceuticals and insurance, those being the two greatest paths to wickedness he had seen in a while, but Kareem was rather single-minded. In the end, Crowley found him a position at the Westminister Reference Library that hadn't existed just a few moments ago. They did need the help, Crowley could see, and now they were going to get it.

He dialed the hiring manager, told her that Mr. P. Archimbault had a likely looking young man on the way, and would Blythe be a dear and process him through?

Kareem looked at him in awe.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Archimbault,” he said, and Crowley sighed.

“That's not me,” he said kindly, “but you don't know that, right?”

He had gotten to lie to a very nice woman named Blythe, and Kareem was off to take a job under false pretenses dealing with the trade of deep and possibly dark knowledge. It wasn't a bad day's work, Crowley decided, even if he wasn't doing this professionally any longer.

He went back to his tabloids, wishing as always that he could take the credit for them himself. He had certainly had the idea back when Herr Gutenberg came out with his lovely machine, , but then the fifteenth century folded into the sixteenth, and there was that pretty boy with the big eyes, and that bit where he got really fascinated with the silkworms that someone smuggled out of China, and all in all, it had gotten away from him. Bit of a common refrain, that one.

He only looked up from a fascinating bit about a pair of Tibetan radio shop workers having some kind of mystic underground vision when Aziraphale made a pleased little noise and sat back from his desk. It had gotten dark, at some point, the shop acquiring the sleepy and satisfied look of a rather intimate parlor.

“Well, I think that's everything,” Aziraphale said. “Thank you for staying with me today. Would you like to have a spot of dinner?”

“Nah, I'm not in the mood for food this week...”

“Then would you care to stay while I eat? Stand me some company?”

Crowley could have said that that was what he had been doing all day, but Aziraphale was giving him that soft, just-short-of-pleading look, so hopeful, and he nodded.

“I really ought to be getting home by morning,” he said, even if he was oddly relieved to not have another itchy, restless night on his own. “Plants won't abuse themselves, you know.”

“Well. That is something I would like to speak with you about.”

“What, my plants?”

“Well, let me at least send out for my dinner first. Won't take more than a moment.”

“You could miracle Solomon's last meal out of air and dust, angel, why are you actually calling?”

“It's part of the pleasure of the experience,” Aziraphale said earnestly, reaching for a landline phone that Crowley suspected was not connected to anything at all. “It's _fun_ to wait and to hope they got it right, and to tip the nice person who came to bring it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. You should try it sometime!”

It was apparently also fun to get fussy when the delivery girl was late, and then to magic her, sad little car and all, to the curb in front of the shop. She did get a rather nice tip for her trouble, at least, and by then Crowley was amused enough by his angel's antics that he didn't predict what came next.

“I'd like you to stay with me. Until your feathers come back in.”

Crowley frowned at him, picking at the fortune cookies ( _there is unexpected love coming towards you!_ ). They spent the night from time to time, even the odd weekend, but they had never spent that much time in each other's pockets. His first impulse was to think that was a terrible idea. He loved his angel with all his blackened heart, but Aziraphale would just _cramp his style._ He might start wearing tartan for preference, and then where would he be?

The second thought was a gust of longing, a wouldn't-it-be-nice sort of feeling that he was altogether unused to. Neither of those were necessarily bright to bring up to Aziraphale, who was clearly plotting, perhaps even _scheming._

Underneath all of that, however, was a surge of curiosity, and that had always been a winner for him.

“All right. Why? We see each other plenty, angel. What's going through your pretty little head?”

Aziraphale dimpled a little at being called pretty, but he obviously wouldn't be put off.

“I've been doing a little bit of reading today, and I think that your situation... with your wings I mean, warrants some attention.”

“And... you're going to be the one to give it?”

“Well, you're obviously not,” Aziraphale said with the breathtaking bluntness that he was capable of sometimes. Crowley scowled, smashing another fortune cookie under his knuckles ( _heedless tempers give rise to hostile seas!)._

“Now see here-”

“I did. Last night. Your wings are getting chewed to bits, Crowley. It's not healthy for you, and as bad as it is, I suspect it's a symptom of something larger. At least, I didn't see any mites when I first looked.”

“Mites... we're occult beings, what books were you looking at?”

Aziraphale waved it off.

“The point is, I think Armageddon-That-Wasn't _upset_ you. And why shouldn't it? That's what Armageddons, occurring or otherwise, are meant to do. And the adjustment is-”

“Too hard for me?” asked Crowley coldly. “Too much for me to _take_?”

Aziraphale looked startled, which helped a little.

“No, of course not. If it was too much or too hard, you wouldn't be sitting here in front of me. No. It's just an adjustment. Like when you bring a gyrfalcon to a new mew, or when you try to fly a young eagle for the first time.”

“Wh- were you looking up _falconry_ texts? Is _that_ where you're getting all this from?”

“Among other places. They're very good. Very sensible. But they all agree that pterotillomania-”

“What?”

“Feather plucking or feather picking. The self-destructive behavior of pulling out one's feathers from distress, stress, or boredom. It should be taken very seriously, Crowley, and I will not let you disregard it.”

“Oh come _off_ it, angel! I'm not some silly falcon. This has nothing to do with... with distress or stress or boredom!”

He crumpled the fortune reading _Liars believe they reap profits, but will only reap sorrow_ and dropped it on the ground.

Aziraphale looked like he was going to argue, and that was almost a relief. He could take a fight. He had been spoiling for one ever since that day in Tadfield, probably.

Then Aziraphale smiled, and Crowley felt a tickle run down his spine. It was, he thought absently, what a mouse must feel like when the hawk's shadow swept by. Why did it feel _good?_

“Well, would you stay because I asked you to?”

“Aziraphale, this may not be the time to give me _that_ particular look...”

“Oh, likely not. It's probably all sorts of dreadfully unfair and unhealthy, but so is tearing your wings apart. I want you to stay with me until your feathers come back in. I want you to let me _take care_ of you.”

Crowley blinked at a rush of heat and tension that suddenly wound him up like a clock. He knew what _that_ voice meant, and what it usually meant when Aziraphale offered to _take care_ of him.

“Ah... angel. I'm really not sure you mean-”

“Oh I do,” Aziraphale said calmly. “It means letting me do as I want with your best interests in mind. Don't you think I have your best interests in mind, Crowley?”

“I... I know you do, I'm just. Um. Should you really be using that voice in a conversation like this one?”

Aziraphale scooted his chair around the table, and his hand came down to rest on Crowley's thigh.

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale said. “All the guides say that you should enter into arrangements like the ones I'm proposing with a clear mind. My seducing you into something like this is considered predatory at best.”

Crowley swallowed, because Aziraphale's hand on his thigh was moving higher, and the angel's touch was so warm, touching at something coldblooded and longing inside him. Seduced was one word for this. _Tempted_ was the other word, and he was.

“Predatory... that sounds very bad of you, angel,” he said, and Aziraphale smiled, all sweetness.

“It does, doesn't it? Does it tell you how much I want to get my way on this matter? That I would do something like this?”

Aziraphale's hand reached between his legs, squeezing gently. It was pleasure but there was a delicious edge of menace to it, the idea that pleasure could so quickly turn to something that would leave him groaning.

The angel tilted his face against Crowley's throat, his breath just feathering along his adam's apple, making the fine hairs at the back of Crowley's neck stand on end.

“Give me what I want,” he murmured, planting a soft kiss against Crowley's neck. “I love you. I love you best of all things, and you know how well I take care of my things. Just say yes. Let me do as I like.”

Crowley felt as if there were bands around his chest, squeezing tighter and tighter. He clung to Aziraphale, digging his fingers into the angel's practical clothing, not caring that Aziraphale's hand between his legs had grown firmer, almost painful. All that mattered was that this was _his_ angel, and his angel wanted him, and after that, nothing else mattered.

“Yes,” he groaned. “Yes...”

He could feel Aziraphale smile against his throat. Aziraphale gave him another gentle squeeze between the legs and then pulled back. The color on his face was a little high, but otherwise he looked unfairly composed.

“Thank you, my dear. I am so very happy.”

He started to clear away the plates, leaving Crowley with a single fortune cookie in his hands. For want of anything better to do and to compose his spinning thoughts, Crowley cracked it open.

_Don't ask me, I'm just a fortune cookie._

Right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Oh this is such bad kink etiquette. Do not do this thing.


	2. Chapter 2

It started with the witches.

Crowley rather liked witches. They were by and large clever women who were looking for a little more in a world that was determined to give them a little less with every year that went by. Some of them got that little more by being clever with their pin money and selling their skills with midwifery, physicking and herbal lore to the good folk. Others got it by bargaining with demons dressed up as great stinking goats or by pricking their thumbs to sign contracts in blood. Either way, they were usually a fun lot who knew how to make a damned good cordial, and whenever he was in Bideford, he liked to stop and pass the time.

It was almost eighty years after that bad business at Pendle Hill, and Crowley had thought that England put that particular bit of nastiness behind them. He realized he was wrong when he came to Bideford and found three bodies hung up in the square, their feet dangling as if they'd been caught mid-leap. Their necks were neatly broken as coneys for the pot, and Crowley hated, _hated,_ the thought that someone should be proud of what good work they had done with that, how short the drop and quick the snap.

Demons did _not_ get sick. Demons did not care about women who knew how to make good cordial, or how they'd had that recipe from their grandmother in a rhyme because no one in all their family knew how to read, and oh, would he like to take a bottle back to his fine friend in London, it wasn't a bother at all. Demons did not stagger back into the night like wounded animals, trying to turn their thoughts towards some kind of proper reckoning but instead unable to do anything but trying to remember that damn rhyme.

_Two of basil, and one of pepper,_

_Two of pears to make it better..._

What came next? What the hell could possibly come next? Something about mustard? That couldn't be right, could it? Maybe the angel would know, it seemed like his sort of rubbish. Crowley tried to think about what kind of revenge he could take on good and godly Bideford, but his mind was too full of measurements and sugar and whole pears and minced cherries.

Crowley woke up the next morning in the forest, a cold rain pattering down on him and his left wing sore. He looked down to find that the knees of his trousers were torn out from what must have been a truly terrible stumble and a shower of dark feathers on the ground. With a wince, he extended his affected wing to find most of the secondary coverts had been stripped away. He must have torn them out in two great handfuls; there was too much gone for one impulsive motion. The raw skin underneath throbbed, and he folded the wing away carefully, concentrating on doing it as neatly as possible, because it was better than thinking about how Temperance had disliked rainy days and how Mary had liked them.

When he was decent again, Crowley struck out for the main road. London, he decided. He would go to London and stay there for the next few decades. They had plays in London, and foreigners and coffee and sophisticated things. There were no witches in London, and that was just the ticket.

London, noisy, smelly, at once gorged and hungry, was good for him, but he found that he couldn't keep his wings in. At night, they would open up, and then he couldn't keep his hands away, rifling through the long feathers until inevitably one or two or three or more came loose. He was embarrassed when he had to make a report down to hell with half his left wing in tatters, but then the weather warmed up, and there was some kind of circus in town with a great roaring lion of the kind they'd had in the old days. Somehow, he managed to convince Aziraphale to come, and soon enough, when he looked up, his wings were nearly back to their former glossiness.

 ***

The first day was just fine, really. Aziraphale told him that he could go anywhere he liked so long as he was back to the shop after dinner, so he popped back to his place to shout at his plants for a bit, and then he went for a a coffee at his favorite shop. His new favorite, anyway. His old favorite had been turfed out by some kind of oxygen bar, and oh did he wish he had come up with that particular bit of nonsense.

He wouldn't have been himself if he didn't at least think about disobeying Aziraphale's little edict. He wondered if the angel would come after him and drag him back to the shop by the ear like a naughty schoolboy or if he would start sending him increasingly passive-aggressive texts. No one could passive as aggressively as Aziraphale when he had a mind to do it.

He would wait, Crowley realized. He would simply wait until Crowley finally did show up, whether it took a night, four nights, ten or a thousand, and then Crowley would have to explain himself. That was the worst. Bring on the whips and brands, really. Any amount of physical pain was better than having to stand in front of Aziraphale and _explain_ himself. Aziraphale had the patience of the damned. He would ask questions in his calm and reasonable way until Crowley would admit why he had really stayed away, and that it wasn't meanness or contrariness, but fear, fear of what the angel would do, what he would say, what he would inadvertently reveal or discover about himself.

No. Better to avoid all of that and just be on time.

Crowley arrived just as Aziraphale was finishing up the last of his dishes. He came up behind Aziraphale, wrapping his arms around the angel's waist and burying his nose in the nape of his neck.

“You smell good,” he muttered, and Aziraphale made a soft pleased sound.

“It's the new dish soap. Have you had a good day?”

“It was all right, I guess,” he said, because it really hadn't been bad. Everything he had done was colored by the fact that at a specific time, he would be at Aziraphale's shop with Aziraphale, and that took away some of the gray that had seemed to seep into his world recently.

“You should tell me all about it while I work.”

“Work?”

For the first time, Crowley noticed the brushes that Aziraphale had laid on the table, ranging in size from the length of his hand to something dainty enough to be a makeup brush.

“Angel, there's no need-”

Aziraphale touched his chin, smiling at him with just a hint of steel in his unearthly blue eyes.

“You're not telling me what's necessary or not right now,” he said kindly. He pulled out a kitchen chair, the kind with a ladder back and gestured to it.

“Straddle the chair facing backwards please. Wings out.”

Crowley's face went a dull red at Aziraphale's calm order. That _wasn't_ something an angel said to another angel. It wasn't even something that demons said to one another. It was- he didn't want to think about who said that to whom, or why it made him something in him tighten with heat.

Wordlessly, he did as he had been told, resting his chin on the back of the kitchen chair, hands lightly clasped around the the rungs. He shifted a little, aware of the how far apart his thighs were, how he couldn't see what Aziraphale was doing at all. He hunched his shoulders up, listening as the angel moved behind him.

“All right now, let's see. It's been a little while since I've done this for anyone, so please tell me if I do anything that hurts or that is in the least uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable... you mean like letting a damned angel fuss over my wings as if I were a show chicken?” he asked. “Like that?”

He hadn't meant to say that, but Aziraphale only laughed. Crowley started to turn towards him, but Aziraphale's fingers tangled in his hair, gripping tight enough that Crowley whimpered with pleasure. It felt good, so very good, but it was also an excellent reminder of how strong Aziraphale really was and how vulnerable Crowley had become by putting his back him.

“If you like,” Aziraphale said affably. “You should tell me if my doing this makes you uncomfortable in the least.”

“And you'll stop?”

“Oh, my dear, of course not. Why would you think that?”

Crowley let out an astonished laugh, because there was no doubt in his mind that Aziraphale meant it. He would be nervous and having second thoughts about all of this if he weren't suddenly also hard over it. Something about the indifference in Aziraphale's voice hit him square between the legs, and he hadn't even touched him yet.

“Right,” he managed, and Aziraphale went back to work.

He started with his fingers, smoothing the feathers out and separating them, and the intimacy of that and the tickles of sensation that sent through his body made him twitch and mutter. Apparently calling Aziraphale a power-mad little tyrant was just fine, and he took advantage of it, swearing under his breath because that kept something like a wall between him and the insidious pleasure that came from Aziraphale working over him so intimately.

Then there were the brushes, and they were worse because they were so fine and small. The light, light touches were every so slightly maddening, ratcheting up the tension in Crowley's spine with no clear way to let it go. The first time Aziraphale found a ticklish spot, Crowley's wing snapped in and then kicked out, catching Aziraphale square in the face.

“Oh, sorry...”

“You aren't,” Aziraphale said with affection. “Warn me if you can next time.”

It happened again, and then the next time after that, it swept the brushes off the table with a clatter.

“Sorry,” Crowley said with a smirk.

“Is it too much?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley sighed irritably.

“You said you were going to do whatever you wanted anyway...”

“Yes, and now I am asking you if it's too much.”

Ugh. Reasonable angel.

“It's not. It's just... a lot. Like ants crawling over my skin. Makes me all jittery like I want to go, I don't know. Punch a demon and drink a pint or something.”

“Well, I can't have you doing that, can I? I think I have a solution. Stand up, please, wings in.”

All right, those orders could stop being arousing _any time now._ This had better not awaken anything in him, but Crowley was rather afraid that whatever it was had rolled out of bed, put on some fresh clothes and kissed its wife on the way out the door. He stood, folding his wings in, and allowed Aziraphale to lead him to the sink.

“Am I going to scrub your sink to calm down or something?”

“Oh goodness no. You never get the crevices. No. I just want you to put your hands on the edge of the sink there and hold on.”

“Until when?”

“Until I tell you to let go, of course.”

Crowley started to ask what in the world that meant when there was thick swishing sound, and then a bright and searing pain exploded across his rear.

“ _Ohfuckwhatthefucking-”_

Aziraphale hit him twice more, breathtakingly hard and enough to make his body break out in a sweat. His legs trembled, and he had to concentrate on not reaching back to grasp at the offended flesh. He was glad to cling on to the edge of the sink because otherwise he might have dropped. Aziraphale was strong, and this body, while immortal, was no more resistant to pain and pleasure than any other.

He was still swearing softly, blinking back shocked tears, when Aziraphale dropped the slotted metal spoon into the sink in front of him. Crowley leaned in against him, and Aziraphale dropped a hand down to his rear to squeeze lightly. Even that gentle motion made Crowley hiss with pain.

“With a _metal_ spoon?” he demanded.

“As hard as I wanted to hit you, the wooden one would have broken. There. You took that very well, darling. You can let go of the sink and go back to the chair now. Let's see if that has made things easier.”

Crowley winced a little when he went back to straddle the chair. He was going to bruise if he didn't miracle the pain away, but he found that it did help. The pain had drained some of the restlessness out of him, left him slouched on the chair with his legs stretched out as if it was his own idea. Behind him, Aziraphale continued to fuss with his wings, smoothing them out with the most delicate touches, but it was a little less overwhelming now. He didn't feel as if he were going to crawl out of his skin, or as if he might have to leap up and find some urgent business in Minsk or Phnom Penh to attend to. Instead, he could simply let himself drift, eyes half-closed and nearly asleep as Aziraphale's fingers wove between his feathers and sorted them each to each.

“They must but tidy enough by now,” he said with irritation. He hadn't expected to get a reply, but Aziraphale hummed with pleasure, standing away slightly.

“Oh they were tidy enough a little while ago.'

Crowley turned his head to frown at him. Aziraphale didn't look as if butter would melt in his mouth. Handy trick that when you were really a bloody sadist.

“What are you on about?”

“Your feathers are tidied up a bit, and brushed as well. That doesn't take so very long. This was more about you getting used to me handling you.”

“Handling me... is that something you are going to be doing a lot?” The sensation that gave him was arousal mingled with a certain anticipatory dread. He wished it felt less good, or that he was less intrigued.

“Oh yes. But you needn't look so concerned. It won't all be hard to bear. Wings in, please and stand up.”

Standing, Crowley pulled his wings in, and he was just noticing that they did seem to move a little smoother when Aziraphale came to stand behind him. One arm went around Crowley's chest, and the other dropped rather lower.

“Angel..!”

“Oh, I do like when you call me that,” Aziraphale murmured. “Especially when you say it like that.”

He undid Crowley's trousers so quickly that a minor miracle was probably involved, and then his hand was working at Crowley's cock as if it was the most natural thing to be doing in a pleasant little kitchen.

“I love you,” Aziraphale said, and there was something utterly adoring in his tone. “I love you so, I love you best, and I want to make you feel so many things. Right now, I want you to feel good, and I want you to remember how good I can make you feel, especially if you have been good for me. You _are_ going to be good for me, aren't you, Crowley?”

“Yes, yes, only keep doing that,” Crowley hissed. “Don't stop, don't, please...”

“I won't. No games right now, dear, just your pleasure. Just how good I can make you feel with my hand, and some other night, with my mouth, I think, you would like that, wouldn't you, me worshiping you while you lie back on my bed, grasping the sheets and out of your mind with how good I can make you feel...”

Crowley realized as he was doing it that he was coming with his ass welted from a metal spoon, aroused from having Aziraphale brush out his wings, from a goddamn hand job in the middle of the kitchen. It didn't matter, he was coming anyway, making a mess of himself and Aziraphale's hand, his entire body sagging with relief when he was done.

Aziraphale kept him from falling and manhandled him back into the chair. Crowley didn't sit on it so much as overwhelm it with a loose assembly of limbs, sprawled so far that his head rested on the back of the chair while his legs stretched in front of him.

Aziraphale washed his hands at the sink, and then came back to help Crowley out of the chair.

“What _now_?” Crowley asked. He felt as if he were floating, his feet miles away from his head and his entire body buzzing like a summer field full of bees.

“Well, now we go lie down, and you can have a nap if you like. I can read to you, or if you want, we can whip over to your place and watch some television.”

Crowley lifted his head to look at Aziraphale.

“You hate television. So much.”

Aziraphale smiled, and there was so much love and affection in it that Crowley wanted to go crawling away into some deep pit. Surely it had to be some kind of mistake that all that love was for him.

“Oh darling. If I could throw every television into a vast fire and let the children of Londontown dance around it like little pagans, I would. But I love you. And right now, I want you to have what you want.”

“I want cartoons,” Crowley said immediately. He didn't, but he did want Aziraphale to utter that soft and grieved sigh before raising his hand to snap them over to Crowley's flat.

“Terrible brat,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley laughed.

“And you love me anyway,” he said.

“No, and I love you because.”

Then he snapped his fingers and they were gone.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Look, I'm from the Hannibal fandom. We say "I love you" in weird ways over there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale and Crowley make some mistakes. Please check tags.

All right.

Crowley could take grooming. It was still twitchy and embarrassing and slightly nerve-wracking, but the key was that he could see it coming.

Every night, for a solid three weeks, it was the same. He had to be at the shop by the time Aziraphale finished his dinner, Aziraphale would get out the brushes, and he would straddle the kitchen chair while the angel fussed over his feathers, straightening them, combing them, making those dry little tcch sounds with his tongue.

If Crowley got too restless, which sometimes he did, sometimes he didn't, Aziraphale would stand him up and give him three hard swats with that damned spoon. Even that was all right for the rush of relief and the boneless acceptance that followed as Aziraphale guided him back to the chair and stroked his hair before getting on with it.

Once or twice, he thought about asking Aziraphale to start with the spoon, but that made his blush travel from his collar to his hairline in record time. He couldn't quite stand it, the idea of _asking_ for it and knowing that the _only_ reason he was being told to grab onto the sink ledge, the _only_ reason that pain was coming, was because he knew he couldn't control himself. That he needed the help and the hurt.

So the grooming was going just fine, becoming as much a part of the rhythm of his life as the quiet roar of London traffic and the evening stocking of his favorite paper at the newsstand. He still found himself worrying at his feathers sometimes, plucking at the down and his smaller coverts, but he had only woken up with a flight feather mangled in his hand once or twice since they started this. He thought they would keep on like this until a full molt took care of the rest, but apparently that wasn't to be.

They were just finishing up their evening session, and Crowley was still somewhat guiltily relishing the pain from the metal spoon and the relief that came with it. Aziraphale didn't always get him off after, but he was still hopeful, or at least he was until Aziraphale turned to him.

“All right, dear. Your feathers are looking a bit better, but you must keep your hands away from them.”

Crowley frowned.

“I do, most of the time. Hands seem to have a mind of their own.”

The smile that Aziraphale gave him could have sent a fully-armed demonic battalion into full retreat. It wasn't that it was cruel or uncaring. Aziraphale's smile was beautifully warm, and it told you he cared so much. So very, very much.

“Then I suppose I will have to change their mind.”

All right, that shouldn't have made his heart jump or his cock stir a little, but it did. He swallowed hard, deliberately not putting his hands behind his back as he suddenly wanted to.

“What're you thinking, angel?”

Aziraphale made a considering noise as he put the kettle on to boil. It was uncertain at this point in time whether England had given Aziraphale his quiet obsession with tea or if it were the other way around. He made tea like other people bit their nails or mangled their straw papers. Crowley was momentarily resentful that while he was fouling up his wings, Aziraphale simply made a good black tea with two sugars and some milk.

“Do you want me to tell you?”

Crowley blinked.

“Now you're asking me?”

“I am, yes. I can tell you now... or I can let you find out for yourself what happens if I see that you have been at your wings after I told you to let them alone. It's up to you.”

Crowley's stomach lurched at Aziraphale's words. There was no menace in them at all. Aziraphale was just telling him something that was true, and that made it somehow darker. He took the cup of tea that Aziraphale offered him, cupping it in his hands and staring at the steam that drifted up. He sneaked a glance at his angel, who was sipping his own tea with the devoted air of someone who thought that each cup deserved his full attention.

The first thing that popped to Crowley's mind was _yes, of course I want to know._

He did. But then he felt the nervousness and the fear twist into something that he found almost dizzily arousing. He didn't know what Aziraphale had planned, though he could probably make a few educated guesses. Not knowing sent a wave of heat through him, made him clutch his teacup a little tighter and lick his lips nervously.

“I don't want to know,” Crowley said in a rush. “Surprise me, I guess.”

“I won't have to if you keep your hands to yourself,” Aziraphale responded peaceably.

***

Crowley went out the next day, jittery and unable to concentrate on much of anything. He abused his plants in a distracted kind of haze, he read the same article in the Infernal Observer four times and still couldn't remember it, and at the end of the day, he was just staring off into the distance, mind blank.

He kept wondering what Aziraphale had in mind, what he could _possibly_ be plotting, and before he knew what was happening, there was a handful of fluff floating to the ground.

Oh. Well, I guess I'm going to find out now, he thought, and the twin surge of dread and arousal was just getting confusing.

He stayed at his own flat until the very last moment, until he knew that even a millisecond later would be late, and then he was in Aziraphale's kitchen, feeling at once sullen and frazzled and excited. His limbs felt too long and too many, and he had to concentrate to keep himself from knocking over a rack of jam jars.

“Hello, dear,” Aziraphale said, coming up from the shop. “How's your day been?”

“I pulled some- that is. I was. Pulled. Some feathers out.”

Aziraphale gave him a surprised look.

“Come here. Let me see.”

Crowley opened his wings after a short moment where he was sure he couldn't. He was shaking a little now, hot in the face and with a feeling a little like nausea in the pit of his belly. He was half-way aroused, and it was going to be more than half-way, he thought, by the time Aziraphale was done touching his wings and examining the damage.

“Oh that does look like it hurts,” Aziraphale murmured. “Into the chair, please.”

The chair was safe. He knew what happened in the chair. It was a sturdy thing, and he could cling to the rungs while Aziraphale rummaged around behind him. Crowley squirmed as discreetly as he could, pressing his forehead against the chair's top rung. _What_ was the angel doing?

He made an involuntary surprised sound as Aziraphale started working over his wings as he had for the last two weeks. Aziraphale's fingers were gentle, making sure that the affected area was clean and cared for, and then going on to make sure everything else was in order. Crowley didn't need the spoon tonight; this time he was so tense his wings might have been made of granite, all but trembling as he waited for the other whatever to drop.

This is probably how my plants feel all the time, Crowley thought, but before he could figure that one out, Aziraphale finished up, stroking Crowley's back between the wings with absent-minded affection.

“All right, that's taken care of,” Aziraphale said briskly. “Not as bad as it could be, but certainly not ideal. Go ahead and put them away now.”

Crowley's shoulders hitched up, and he avoided looking at Aziraphale.

“Crowley. Look at me, please.”

“I don't have to,” he mumbled, even as he did.

Aziraphale smiled, reaching out to pet his hair. For a moment, Crowley almost pulled away, but then sense reasserted itself. This was his angel, and there was nothing on Heaven, Hell or Earth that would make him pull away from Aziraphale. He held himself still, and the pleasure from Aziraphale's touch helped him relax just a little.

“Do you remember what I said?” Aziraphale asked, his voice gentle as sunlight. “Yesterday?”

“I'm not likely to forget, am I?”

“Tell me.”

“You said that if my hands had a mind of their own, that you would have to see about changing it if they went after my wings again.”

“Very good, darling,”

Aziraphale leaned down and gave him a tender kiss on the head. For a moment, Crowley breathed in the scent of cologne and old books. It was a tiny bit of calm that steadied him more than he might have believed, but then Aziraphale was pulling back, drawing out what looked like a long leather bookmark.

“What's that?” asked Crowley, his voice a little thinner than normal.

“Do you want to know now?”

He swallowed hard, but the arousal and nerves were twisting together, driving him to shake his head.

“Just do it,” he snapped.

Aziraphale paused for a moment, and then came to stand in front of Crowley, who was still straddling the chair.

“Left hand, please.”

Aziraphale had mentioned that he was getting Crowley used to being handled, but it wasn't until this moment that Crowley could see how far it had gone, and how deep. He put his hand out before he had even quite decided that he was going to, palm down, heart feeling like it was going to beat right out of his chest, entire body hotter than it should have been.

Aziraphale turned it so that it was it was palm up, supporting it from below with his own hand. The warmth was comforting until the angel flipped the leather bookmark back over his shoulder and brought it down in a perfect arc to crack against Crowley's palm

The pain was immediate, stunning, arousing and terrifying. For a moment, Crowley couldn't process it at all, not the screaming nerves, not the way a dark welt rose up immediately from his palm, not the sickening fear. He uttered a strangled cry, his teeth coming down on his tongue so hard he tasted blood, and then Aziraphale was lifting the strap again, bringing it down for another snapping blow.

It hurt, it hurt and it was his angel hurting him, and yes, it was arousing, and yes, there was something painfully right about it at the same time. He didn't scream at the second blow, but he did clench his teeth so hard he was distantly surprised nothing cracked. His legs kicked out straight before he brought them back under him, and the strap came down again, making him cover his face with his free hand, trying to remind himself how to breathe.

I can take this, he thought desperately. I can take this. I can take this.

Then the strap came down again, twice in a rapid succession, hitting the same damned place, and those thoughts were wiped out by words like _burning_ and _broken_ and _ruined._

His teeth were clenched around the scream, but a steady whining sound escaped, high and desperate and wild. He couldn't control it anymore than he could control the tears that were flowing down his face or the sobs that shook his shoulder.

_I can take this_ turned into _I_ have _to take this,_ and he shook with desperation and with need. If Aziraphale had touched him between the legs right now, he might have gone over with a few strokes, but of course he wouldn't. He was too busy hurting him.

The strap snapped down one last time, blistering his palm a deep deep red.

Crowley had his face buried in the crook of his arm, sobbing silently as Aziraphale touched the hellishly hot skin of his palm and planting a gentle kiss there. Even that was enough to make Crowley flinch, and Aziraphale laid Crowley's hand, palm up, on his thigh. It felt like it was barely a part of him in that moment, just a terrible throbbing pain that he couldn't get away from. He had to fight the instinct to close his hand protectively, because that would have made the slowly-fading pain flare up again with a vengeance.

“Very good, darling,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley moaned softly with relief. It was fine. It was over. Aziraphale had seen that he had had enough.

“Right hand, please.”

Something in him just shattered. No. He couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, please, he _couldn't._

Crowley gave Aziraphale his hand even as he was still sobbing, and the words that were pouring out of his mouth barely made sense to him. He couldn't stop saying _no,_ or begging Aziraphale to love him enough not to do this, that he couldn't take this, just couldn't, and that he would be completely and utterly perfect forever if Aziraphale would forgive him just this once.

“Oh, my darling.”

Aziraphale knelt in front of him, kissing him and holding his unhurt hand tightly. The reprieve was cold water dumped on his head, and he didn't care if it was temporary. Right now, though, he felt utterly incapable of protest, incapable of doing anything but moving as Aziraphale directed him to stand up. He was as docile as a rock while Aziraphale miracled them up to the loft, and then he let himself be tumbled into the bed.

Crowley whined with relief as Aziraphale pressed a cool wet cloth to his face, relieving some of the heat and bringing down the swelling in his eyes from his crying. At some point, he would find some time to be ashamed of crying so much, but right now, he let himself relax into the comfort of Aziraphale's touch. He calmed down in centimeters, each notch making the next a little easier, and at some point, clinging to Aziraphale as the angel held him tight, he noticed something.

“'m hard,” he muttered, reflexively arching his hips against Aziraphale's thigh. Somehow, he had stayed hard through all of that, and though it was fading a bit now, he could still feel the restless heat of it, especially pressed this close to Aziraphale.

“You are.”

“Do something about it?” he murmured, cajoling, but Aziraphale only stroked his hair.

“Better not. There are some things I wouldn't like getting linked in your head.”

Crowley wanted to protest that that ship had likely sailed, sometime around the Fall or even earlier, but one of the best things of Aziraphale _taking care_ of him was that he wasn't meant to be protesting or arguing. All he had to do was curl up next to his angel and let things happen to him, a nice change from normally being the thing that happened to other people.

As they lay in the quiet darkness, he started to gather himself back up. His arousal ebbed, he got irritated with how itchy his eyes were, and his hand still throbbed, but it was duller now, far from the unbearable thing it had been while Aziraphale was striking it. He still jumped a little when Aziraphale reached down to graze the fingertips of the injured hand with his own.

“Do you want me to make this better?”

The question made his heart squeeze a little, might have made him start up that ridiculous weeping again if he hadn't stuffed that impulse in a box and sat on the lid.

“I don't know why you stopped,” Crowley said pettishly. “I've had worse. From you, even.”

“Not like that. Darling, why did you ask me if I still loved you?”

Crowley frowned.

“I never did.”

“You did, when I asked for your right hand.”

Crowley felt his face go hot and red again. Why was it so arousing when Aziraphale made him confess what he was thinking were while they were naked in bed and such torture when he did it at times like this? It hardly seemed fair.

“I don't remember,” he said truthfully. “I was saying a lot of stuff.”

“You were. So please try to think about why you asked me if I still loved you.”

Crowley fiddled with the hem of Aziraphale's jacket, where some tailor from 1902 had tucked in a fraying bit but mended it with brown thread instead of tan. Aziraphale said that it gave the jacket _character,_ which Crowley privately thought meant he was too lazy to take it off again and let someone do a better job.

“Tell me something true,” he said at last. Aziraphale likely knew he was stalling, but he still made a soft humming sound in consideration.

“I love you more than anything in all the world, and I will not stop. Another?”

“Yes.”

“I love hurting you almost as much as I love making you feel good.”

Crowley shuddered at the calm truth of that, because that would send any sane thing running, wouldn't it? That was a delicate balance, and the amount of hurt that Aziraphale was actually capable of would make everything that happened tonight look like a tea party.

“Here's another one, even if you don't ask for it. I want you to be happy and whole more than I want either of those things.”

“Really?” Crowley hated how _hopeful_ that came out. He had to bury his face in Aziraphale's chest, careful of his hand but unable to look up.

“Oh yes.” The utter calm and assurance in Aziraphale's voice made Crowley look up, and he could find no lie in Aziraphale's beloved face.

I would know, too, he told himself. That was always my lot, never his.

He sighed and sat up, crossing his legs and holding his injured hand with the other. The pain was still there, and the marks the strap had left across his white palm were almost black.

“I didn't _know_ ,” he muttered. “You asked me if I wanted to know, and I didn't, because it sounded, y'know, sexy. And it was, Satan, it _was,_ I promise you. And if you ask me now, I would say, sure, don't touch your wings or I'll strap the shit out of your hands. And if you ask me now, I would say of course you love me, and you wouldn't stop loving me just because I was stupid about my wings for one day.”

“You weren't _stupid_ about your wings, and yes. I would never-”

“But I didn't know it just then. Thinking too fast for it, I think. I went right over what you were trying to do, and landed...”

“Somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't sure of me.”

Crowley looked down. Aziraphale was right about things getting linked in his head. If he started getting turned on by feeling like an idiot, he was never going to get anything done ever again.

“Didn't mean it,” he muttered, and then he uttered a very un-demonlike squawk as Aziraphale hauled him into his arms for a full-body hug. It was close and not altogether comfortable and mostly unlike the angel. Crowley was the one who liked to slop himself all over people. Aziraphale was more deliberate, more finicky and particular about where the arms and legs and mouths and noses went.

“I'm sorry,” Aziraphale said, his voice only a little muffled for being buried in Crowley's hair. “I am _so sorr_ y I made you think that, that you could ever, _ever_ think that...”

“It's not you, it's me, angel. I'm the one who didn't-”

“It doesn't matter. Not to me. And I'm sorry. And thank you for having the cleverness and the courage to tell me.”

Crowley shrugged uncomfortably.

“It would have been more clever to tell you before...”

Aziraphale let him go, absently reaching over to straighten his collar where he had rumpled it.

“We are operating on a time-frame of millennia. You have nearly all the time in the world to tell me what you need. I am just glad it came out today.”

“Yeah, well, I'll do better tomorrow.” He didn't say whether he would do better with avoiding picking at his feathers or taking the pain better tomorrow. Jury was still out on that one.

“Oh, we're not doing this tomorrow.”

Crowley scowled.

“I _told_ you, I've had worse from you before.”

Aziraphale looked at him, perfectly loving, perfectly sincere and perfectly dangerous.

“You did tell me. Thank you. Right now, unless you are telling me something new, I want you to think about what it means that you're telling me something while I'm meant to be taking care of you.”

Crowley's mouth shut tight, and he swallowed hard. He knew _that_ tone of voice very well.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Of course you may.”

“ _Why_ aren't we doing this tomorrow? I mean, now I know better, and I won't lose my mind like-”

Aziraphale held up a finger.

“I am going to be very cross if you insult yourself again.”

Crowley coughed.

“But anyway. Why aren't we doing this tomorrow?”

“Because I don't want any reminders of your unhappiness and my own mistakes any time soon. Gluttony is more my speed, not pride, but still. And because it's really just one thing I had planned anyway.”

“Wait, one thing? How much of this have you got written out in some ledger somewhere?” The idea was both appalling and more than a little arousing.

“Oh, nothing so very formal. Mostly just keeping a quiet list in my head about you and what this all means. What I'd like to do with you, and how you might react. Things like that.”

Crowley took a deep breath, because vanity wasn't one of the primary sins, but he had pushed very hard for it. The idea that his angel spent that much of his time thinking about him, considering him, planning for him, was extraordinary. It was a strange image to attach to, but now he was imagining Aziraphale making notes, and lists, maybe even charts and illustrations...

“Tell me about some of them,” he said, curling back down on the bed. “Maybe stroke me off a bit as you do?”

Aziraphale hesitated for a moment, and then lay down forehead to forehead with Crowley, one arm tucked under his head, the other hand reaching out to loosely cradle Crowley's welted hand.

“All right,” he said. “To the first at least. As to the second, let's see where the mood takes us, all right?”

Crowley nodded happily, because he knew where _his_ mood usually took them. However, before Aziraphale had gotten much past describing something to do with straps and bells, Crowley's eyes were drifting shut, and by the time Aziraphale got to the hoods, he was fast asleep.

 


	4. Chapter 4

“In the thirteenth century, it started when I got trapped in some peasant's back room.”

Aziraphale glanced up from his catalog, tilting his head slightly. Crowley was seated on the counter, legs dangling and leaning back on his hands. He didn't look at Aziraphale, instead choosing to focus on the esoteric patterns of the dust dancing in the sunlight. There were secrets there, spelled out for the eyes that could see. He read them and let them go again.

“Silly of me, really. Careless. Left my name out where any sorcerer, warlock or would-be-wizard could find it. Shouldn't have been surprised when one did.”

He risked a glance at Aziraphale, who was more still than a funerary stone angel. Judging from the storm gathering in his eyes, it would be someone's funeral at least, even if that person was centuries dead.

“So he caught me, got some poxy little secrets about life, the universe and everything, and then instead of letting me go, he popped me into his back room with some old dress forms and a stack of pamphlets about the Black Death.”

“And how long-”

“Two years.”

Crowley shuddered a little, drawing one knee up to his chest. Time didn't pass any more quickly for occult beings than it did for humans, and saying the words reminded him of how long he had truly spent in that damn room.

“Couldn't sleep it out either, because there was a little window, and the sun came in.”  
That had been the worst part. In the dark he might have passed one long night, even if his dreams were troubled with someone's mouth on his name and what felt like clawed hands rummaging through his brain. The sunlight kept him up, kept him aware of each day crawling by and then away from him, another day lost, and another night in front of him.

He coughed slightly. He found out later that he had been in Trondheim in Norway. There wasn't a hearth in the room, and he couldn't remember any warm days there.

“So after a while I guess I got so bored, I started going after, you know. My wings. They would just barely fit in that space, and when I had them out, I was a bit warmer. Felt better, having them around me, and I'd dig my fingers into them to warm up. Then when I got restless, nothing to do, nothing to look at, I started tugging at them. Gently at first, and then not so gently and that was-”

He stopped because 'good' wasn't the right term, not when he had looked down one day to see the ground carpeted in a shower of down and coverts. Eventually, he had moved on to his secondary feathers, rationing them out for one bright burst of pain a week, something that would bring tears to his eyes and offer a reprieve from the terrible gnawing boredom of that damned room.

“Anyway. By the time the mob came for the little pissant, my wings looked like shit, so I just went to ground for a while. Slept it out, and fortunately when I woke up, they were presentable again, just as sleek and pretty as you please.”

“Crowley...”

“Don't – don't think that was the first time or that I'd never done it before. That arrogant little excuse for a wizard didn't start me on this rubbish. I was rubbish _well_ before that. I mean I can't even remember the first time, and that _certainly_ wasn't the worst time-”

“Crowley, darling-”

Aziraphale was coming out from behind his desk to stand in front of him, but Crowley shook his head. He couldn't stop the words from spilling out, as if he had held them too long and now they were eager for escape.

“It's not... it's not anything to do with anything. It's just _me_. It's just the way I am, and it's not going to _stop,_ angel, and you're not going to make it stop forever either, you know that, right? Satan, I hope you do. I better not find that this is... is some kind of story you're telling yourself where you _fix_ me, because you should know by now, I am the Demon fucking Crowley, and I do not _get_ fixed, not by Heaven, not by Hell, not by-”

Aziraphale's hand came down hard on his thigh, a stinging blow that silenced him and sent a jolt of desire straight through him at the same time. He opened his mouth and Aziraphale's hand came up to cover it, preventing him from speaking.

“Thank you for telling me that,” Aziraphale said his words as measured as if he were using a ruler. “I didn't know before, and now I do. And I am sorry that happened to you. And darling, I would never try to fix you. Not when you are utterly perfect as you are, and every bit of you so precious to me. Do you see what you are doing?”

For the first time, Crowley looked up and realized that his wings were out. They had toppled a stack of books to be sorted, and he had one hand buried in the feathers.

Aziraphale pulled his hand away, and Crowley hung his head, feeling more miserable and useless than he had in a while. He pulled his wings in with an almost painful snap.

“Sorry,” he muttered, sliding down from the counter. “'m sorry...”

“My dear, I did not tell you to make you sorry. Tell me how you feel right now.”

He touched his thigh where Aziraphale had struck him.

“Turned on?”

“Thank you. Is that all?'

Of course it wasn't. He sighed, angrily, pacing back and forth in the small space the angel allowed him. There was a moment where he wanted nothing more than to snatch one of those beautiful books down from the shelf and throw it as hard as he could through the plate glass window. That idea was so insane that it brought him up short, at least back to a place where he could reply.

“I dunno. Pent up? Faintly miserable with a chance of tears? Like I want to go fight an ocean liner? What are you looking for, angel?”

Aziraphale made a thoughtful sound.

“No, that's good. Well. Not good. But good for me to understand. And now I think _you_ should understand.”

“What?”

Aziraphale touched Crowley's collar, straightening it out and then adjusting the lapel a little before meeting his eyes with a viciously calm determination.

“That as a matter of fact, _I_ am the angel fucking Crowley. And that I love you. And if you don't want to feel like this-”

_I don't, I don't, oh, I don't..._

“Then I will change that.”

Aziraphale smiled, and somewhere out there, a polar bear died of envy for never having shown its teeth in any snarl half so terrifying.

***

It had sounded so simple.

Strip. Put his hands on a conveniently bare bookshelf at shoulder height. Let Aziraphale put the blindfold on him. Stay there until the shop closed.

He was tucked in an obscure little corner of the shop, close enough to Aziraphale's desk that he could hear the rustling papers and the scratch of the pen, just out of sight of the rest of the shop.

“I'm going to be bored to tears,” he said, as Aziraphale fussily adjusted his hands on the bookshelf.

“You think so?” inquired the angel.

“I know so-”

He swallowed that last O as Aziraphale tied the blindfold over his eyes, dropping everything into darkness. It must have been enchanted in some way. No light got through the soft fabric; it was as if he had shut his eyes at the bottom of the mine. The utter blackness was unnatural, and for a moment he swayed on his feet at the depth of it.

With his eyes so quickly taken out of the equation, his other senses rushed in with a clamor to try to compensate. For a bare instant, he was overwhelmed by the scent of vellum and rabbit-hide glue, of the cracks in the wooden floor under his bare feet, and the quiet rush of London traffic beyond the door. When he steadied, he realized that Aziraphale had been going on for a little bit.

'-when you feel unsafe and unsteady. Right now, what I want you to know is that you can trust me and that you are always safe here with me.”

“How'm I safe like this?” Crowley demanded. “I'm naked as a jaybird and I cant see a blessed thing. I wouldn't know if the Heavenly Host was getting ready to mount a holy crusade right up my-”

“You are safe,” Aziraphale said, “because I am here.”

Why did that make him tear up a little? Crowley shuddered, pressing his forehead against the shelf in front of him. He suddenly felt more naked, the way he felt after a shed, when everything was brand new and a little hard to take. Safe, there was nothing on Earth safer than something Aziraphale chose to guard, and Aziraphale had chosen-

The angel came closer, resting his broad palm squarely between his shoulders. The bookshop was entirely climate controlled, perfectly comfortable, but somehow, Aziraphale's hand spread a kind of warmth through him that central air couldn't touch.

“I told you I take good care of my things,” Aziraphale said softly. “You've seen. Perhaps you need a reminder of what you are.”

“A... thing-?”

“No. Mine.”

Crowley made a keening sound at that, unable to help the moan or the way he hardened at the absolute and consuming possessiveness in Aziraphale's voice.

“All mine,” Aziraphale murmured, placing soft kisses along Aziraphale's bare shoulders. “Nothing will take you away from me. I won't allow it.”

Crowley could lose himself in those kisses alone. That was, of course, before, Aziraphale's hand dropped almost casually down to his cock. He had been half-hard before, but now Aziraphale's hand curled around his shaft, lazily bringing him fully erect with a few easy strokes.

And then...

And then he let him go.

“Hey-!”

“I do have work to do, darling,” Aziraphale said in his most prim and proper tone. “The shop is open, after all.”

 _No one comes in here,_ Crowley reminded himself. Sometimes, he was certain the angel had actually miracled the door away. Anyone who did manage to find their way in was quickly shown the way out. There was no chance that someone would come in and see him like this.

But what if someone did?

The idea took hold with the intensity of determined roots through good soil. _What if_ people came in and saw him? It would probably be some poor person looking for something appropriately obscure and dry, and if Aziraphale wasn't there to gently pull them away from that rear corner, they'd come right around and get an eyeful.

Crowley shuddered at how he would look in the morning light, naked and still. He imagined a human, a mere human with a mere century or less on the planet, allowed to _look_ at him as if he were some kind of decoration, unable to cover himself. He wouldn't even see that particular human, not with the blindfold on. He would only know he was being watched by the gasp or the bitten-off exclamation of surprise...

He drew his breath in sharply as a warm hand cupped his rear, squeezing before moving on. The touch was kind but slightly antiseptic, like idle fingers trailing along the bars of an iron fence.

“Aziraphale?” he asked, his voice slightly wobbly. Of course it was the angel. Who else in all of Her creation could it be?

“Yes, dear?”

“Why did you-”

“Because you feel good. Just a moment, I'm going up to the astronomy section. Back in a jiff.”

He listened as Aziraphale's footsteps receded, heard the clang of the wheeled ladder as Aziraphale brought it around.

 _Too far away,_ he thought, digging his fingernails restlessly into the shelf, but of course that was ridiculous. If he pulled off the blindfold, peeked around the corner, he would see that Aziraphale was just across the shop, up on the ladder and fussing over his damn books.

The instinct to do just that rose up, and he fought it down. He had been like this for fifteen blessed minutes as most. He could last a little longer before bringing the angel's disapproval down on his head.

Crowley took a deep breath, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

 _This is ridiculous. I should tell him this isn't working, that this is_ boring. _It's not going to do anything for me if I'm bored. Being bored is what makes me tear up my wings anyway._

Not that he could tear up his wings if his hands were meant to stay on the shelf.

_What if he just keeps me here every day until I molt? Satan, that could be months, keep me here, touching me whenever he liked, exactly as he liked..._

“Well!” said a soft voice right next to his ear, and Crowley yelped, because he hadn't heard the angel descend the ladder. A tickle of feathers against his temple told him that Aziraphale had simply popped his wings out and floated down, the cheating bastard.

“Well what?” he demanded testily.

“Well, look at that,” Aziraphale helpfully supplied.

Crowley groaned as the angel took a firm grip on his cock, pumping twice, hand tight and entirely in his own time.

“What are you thinking of, darling?”

“Not going tell you,” Crowley managed, because he was a demon after all. He felt like he should be making some kind of resistance against this kind of angelic domination. And now he was thinking of _angelic domination,_ Aziraphale kitted out like some Queen's good soldier, with that sword and a glow of righteous fury, and _that was not helping._

“No?” asked Aziraphale earnestly. He drew his hand over Crowley's cock again, standing so close that his lips were tickling Crowley's ear. “Whatever it is, it seems like you find it fascinating.”

“No, teacher, I don't feel like sharing with the class,” Crowley snapped, and then he gasped when Aziraphale let him go. The difference between the warmth of the angel's hand and the cold air made him shudder. He almost let go of the shelf, but he remembered just in time.

“Ah, well. Perhaps you'll tell me later,”

It was a victory, wasn't it? There wasn't a hand on his cock anymore, but it was still a victory, right? Crowley realized a little uncomfortably that he wasn't sure. All he was sure about was that his cock was achingly hard, craving the angel's touch. He took a deep breath, working on calming down a bit. He would go absolutely insane if he spent the entire day hard.

Just as Crowley was getting things somewhat back under control, the phone, the very last landline in all of London, he was sure, rang.

“Oh don't pick that up, you're meant to be with me today!” he said petulantly, and Aziraphale gave him a brisk smack on the rear as he bustled by.

“Now shush. The shop is open for business. And I am with you. I am right here, and I am not going anywhere. I promise.”

The words thudded against him, making him duck his head a little. He _didn't_ like it when Aziraphale said such things in his calm and off-hand way. It was _patronizing_ and _condescending_ when Aziraphale ruffled the hair at the base of his neck as he talked with some blessed bookseller in Reading. He _hated_ it.  
Crowley refused to pay attention to their conversation, trying to ignore how pleasant Aziraphale's hand in his hair was, how much he liked the soothing tones of the angel's voice. He was ignoring it so well that he barely registered Aziraphale saying, “Oh that would be very fine, Mrs Cunningham. Just give me a moment to get a pen and paper.”

Crowley had a moment to wonder at that, because like him, Aziraphale had an excellent memory. They weren't built to forget anything, so why would...

Crowley nearly bit his tongue when Aziraphale pressed the tip of a pen, sharp and cold, against his shoulder. What in the-

“All right, could you tell me that again? That's 01632 960578, with the Bristol area code, am I correct? Good, good, and I am asking for a Julie Canby?”

Crowley grit his teeth as the pen dug into his flesh. It wasn't much harder than he might scratch at an itch, but something in him quivered at being marked like a damn notepad, at being used and useful to do something so damned insignificant. The J in Julie and the C in Canby were extravagant, and he imagined the angel's elegant secretary hand describing those whorls into his flesh.

“Thank you again, Mrs Cunningham, You're a delight. All my best to the children and the cats.”

He hung up with a soft pleased noise.

“That's Mrs Cunningham,” he said needlessly. “She knew I was looking for some early pamphlets on teratomancy, and she came across some on her last trip to Bristol.”

“How very sweet of her,” Crowley managed, and Aziraphale chuckled, patting the flesh he had marked up.

“She is a dear. And thank you for being so still.”

“'m not a blessed notepad,” Crowley mumbled, not quite sure why he was red.

“Of course not. You're my darling.”

Aziraphale stepped up behind him, so close he could feel the angel's hips pressed against his. He was surrounded by Aziraphale's scent and almost covered by his body, the thick padding of his clothes making him feel somehow enveloped in Aziraphale.

Leisurely, Aziraphale ran his hands up Crowley's sides, trailing them along his arms and then coming down his chest. Crowley twitched when Aziraphale started to handle his cock again, more deliberately this time.

“I think I want you to come today,” Aziraphale said. His tone was identical to the one he used when deciding where to order lunch. “However...”

“Of _course_ there's a however,” Crowley groaned. He was thrusting a little into Aziraphale's hand as if afraid the angel might take it away at any moment.

“Of course there is. You can ask me to make you come, but when you do, and when I do, I will be leaving you like that.”

Crowley whined, pressing his head into the bookshelf. He felt hot, shame mixed with want mixed with an animal arousal that should have been impossible for something like him. Aziraphale had done this once or twice, brought him to climax with his hand and then made him wear the result. He hated it in that vivid way that almost might as well have been loving it.

“How long?” he asked, even as he thought he knew the answer. Aziraphale's hand gripped his cock hard for a moment before easing back into a firm stroke.

“Oh, until I close, I should think. I'm rather busy, and I shan't have time to tidy you up until this evening.”

No. No, he couldn't take that. He couldn't stand the idea of being naked and filthy and blind on top of it all, but apparently a part of him could stand it just fine. His hips bucked against Aziraphale's hand, and for a moment, he thought it might be a moot point, that the decision had been made for him.

Somehow, he pulled back.

“No,” he managed, shaking his head. He was grateful for the blindfold, as if a part of him was convinced that because he couldn't see Aziraphale, Aziraphale couldn't see the wreck he was.

Aziraphale's hand pulled back immediately, and Crowley bit of a groan of complaint and the urge to ask for it back. He knew what it meant now if he did.

“Well, just let me know,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “You're very beautiful, and it's such a pleasure to force those delightful noises out of you.”

“ _How_ are you saying those words like that?” Crowley growled.

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Now shush, I need to call Ms Canby.”

Crowley sat through a seemingly interminable phone call about pamphlets and chapbooks, all the while, Aziraphale tapping his pen against his bare shoulder. There was a kind of idleness to it that was almost restful, and Crowley took a deep breath, focusing on that gentle bounce.

The angel did take good care of his things, and Crowley thought a little drowsily that perhaps he wouldn't mind more of this. Maybe not every day could be spent like some little desk toy in the shop, but perhaps it could be some kind of holiday retreat, like a vacation or some kind of restorative workshop.

The angel finished his call, murmuring with the kind of quiet satisfaction only understood by other people with exactly the same kind of obscure hobby. He gave Crowley a casual scratch down the back as he moved past, and Crowley could hear the squeak of the desk chair's wheels as the angel sat down.

Crowley drifted for a while. Everything was a little soft around the edges, a little buzzing. The world rolled on, and he rolled with it. He could sleep standing up if he needed to, but this wasn't sleep. This was something else, and for the moment, he was content to simply experience it rather than picking it up and turning it around and over.

As it turned out, states like that one took practice, because suddenly he was out of it, straightening up, awake and suddenly aware of the fact that he couldn't hear Aziraphale at all. There was no rustle of paper behind him, no soft and reasonable voice on the phone. He strained his ears, picking through the tumult of the London day, the wind, the turn of the planet, the change of the lights on the corner and the wings of a pigeon on the roof.

No angel.

Crowley swallowed hard, throat suddenly dry. He could sense Aziraphale, of course he could, but after some two hundred years, the entire shop was saturated with him. Beyond that sense of absolute love and somewhat prissy presentation, there was nothing at all that told him that Aziraphale was there. That he wasn't alone.

That thought was like a spike straight through his brain, soaking him in humiliation and fury and panic. To be put on this shameful display, and then _ignored,_ he couldn't and _wouldn't_ bear it...

Even as he turned and ripped the blindfold from his eyes, Crowley realized that there were probably at least a dozen better ways to handle the rush of sudden panic and abandonment that welled up in him.

Then he saw Aziraphale, seated at his desk chair and turned to face him. He had one ankle on the opposite knee and his hands clasped neatly on his lap, unblinking and with a very slight smile on his face.

“Dear, dear,” the angel said.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *(squint) One more chapter, I think, and then this will be done.  
> *I have never in all my life written something this long for a fan project.  
> *Hope you lot are enjoying it. It's been fun to write, certainly.


	5. Chapter 5

_Don't run._

That was the second thought that popped into Crowley's head, because he realized that whatever happened next, whatever Aziraphale was going to do to him, it would only be made ever so much worse if he ran and the angel had to chase him.

The silence between them stretched out, and of course Crowley snapped first.

“Well?” he burst out.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows, apparently intent on dragging this out. Bloody _sadist._

“Were you not enjoying yourself, darling?”

“When was any of this about me _enjoying_ myself?” Crowley demanded. He was naked, off-balance and in the wrong, it was just like-

“You set me up,” he snarled, pressing back against the bookshelf like a furious cornered cat. “You _knew_ I was going to break. You _knew_ I couldn't do it”

Aziraphale actually looked startled at that. He came to his feet, and Crowley opened his mouth and hissed. His wings didn't come out but it was a near thing.

“Crowley...”

“Don't,” Crowley snapped. “Don't offer me any... any blessed platitudes about it being just fine or that I'm somehow not a fuck-up. After you put me on display like a damned _houseplant_ , you don't have that right.”

Crowley shook his head, two hard jerks, and snapped his fingers. He had thought that his clothes would feel safer after spending so much of the day naked, but instead they were close and confining, a weight that clung and suffocated and muffled. It was humiliating to think that just hanging around the shop naked could change what he felt and who he was so quickly, and he stalked towards the door.

“Where do you think you're going?”

He glanced back over his shoulder, furious to see that Aziraphale hadn't moved at all, was still watching him without blinking, maybe without breathing.

“Does it matter? It's not your problem anymore, angel. _I_ am not your problem. This was ridiculous. This was _stupid._ I should never have allowed myself to- I can't believe we thought this was a good idea...”

He shook his head even as if it felt his heart was twisting itself into little pieces. He wanted... he didn't know what he wanted. He wanted to go hide in the deepest cavern in the bottom of the world. He wanted to crawl up to Aziraphale's big warm bed and hide there until things made sense again.

 _Split the difference,_ he thought. _Time for Moscow. Time for Rome. Time for any place where I don't have to-_

He was so consumed with his own thoughts that he was startled by the boom of displaced air as Aziraphale appeared in front of him, so close he could smell the lilac and juniper of his cologne. Aziraphale's hand wrapped firmly around Crowley's wrist, but Crowley didn't even look down because he was far too startled by the remorseless calm in Aziraphale's eyes. He tried to pull his arm away, but it was like it was stuck into a brick wall.

“Do you think you failed?” Aziraphale asked, his voice utterly reasonable.

“What else do you call what I just did?”

“I told you to do something. You showed me that you needed something else, so now we're going to do something else.”

The sharp stab of hope that struck him was quickly overwhelmed by a tide of frantic despair. Some people thought that despair was a thick and tarry thing, and maybe it was, but for Crowley, despair had always hit like the flick of a horsewhip against tender skin. It was blinding in its pain and it drove him forward even if he couldn't see what was in front of him.

“Don't say that,” he said, almost begged. “Don't. Don't tell me that you're going to... that we're somehow still all right.”

“Why, darling, of _course_ we are.”

Crowley looked up and started to argue, not that he wanted to be right but because he wanted to be proved wrong. Then Aziraphale pulled him closer and with his free hand cupped against Crowley's cheek, kissed him.

The kiss was firm and sweet and utterly normal. It was the way Aziraphale would kiss him when he was off to investigate some mischief or other and might not be back for a few days. It was the way he liked to kiss Aziraphale when then sun shone on the angel's pale hair and just for a moment, he believed that every little thing was really going to be all right.

It was a thorough kiss, and it melted him just enough that he wasn't quite so apt to go running for the hills, convinced that he had ruined utterly everything or that Aziraphale's sadism actually stretched as far as wanting to see him ruin everything.

_He loves me. He doesn't want to lose what we have. I'm not... This isn't something he'll just throw away when it becomes inconvenient._

The realization struck like a ton of bricks, and he wobbled a bit. Aziraphale made a startled sound as Crowley's knees gave out, but he only slumped to the ground, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Elbows propped on his knees, he pressed his fists against his eyes. For a wonder, he wasn't crying, but he doubted it was far off.

“Fuck. I really am a-”

Until this moment, Aziraphale had been utterly calm. That changed when he reached down, twisted his fingers in Crowley's hair and wrenched hard enough to make Crowley cry out in startled pain. Aziraphale dropped down one knee, hand still in Crowley's hair, face just inches from Crowley's own. His blue eyes were luminous, his mouth set in a hard line.

“If you say another word against yourself,” he said, enunciating every word clearly, “I will bridle you. This involves a piece of steel inserted into your mouth, long enough to graze your throat and held in place with straps. I will leave it on you - _in_ you- for a full night and day. You were given a tongue for many reasons, but speaking against yourself was not one of them. Tell me you understand.”

Crowley licked his lips, suddenly tasting the steel, gagging slightly, and feeling the way the straps would wrap around his head. He was obscurely aware of being turned on, but that was far from the most important thing right now.

“I... I understand.”

Aziraphale did not smile at that, but he seemed to soften just a little bit. His hand dropped from Crowley's sore head, and he rose to his feet.

“Come on, darling. It looks like we have a great deal to discuss.”

“Obviously,” Crowley muttered. He managed to rise to his feet and stagger after Aziraphale, but it felt all wrong. He was too tall, too ungainly. The ground was too far away, and his face felt like it was two feet in front of his head. He made it to desk all right, but for some reason, he didn't like the look of the chair that Aziraphale had found for him. Instead, as Aziraphale sat down, he fidgeted for a moment, and then pointed at the floor at Aziraphale's feet.

“Can I?”

Aziraphale looked first surprised, and then thoughtful. He nodded, and Crowley dropped gratefully to the ground, crowding against Aziraphale's legs, his cheek pressed against the angel's thigh. It made him feel better immediately, and he sighed with relief. Aziraphale's hand came down to rest in his hair, gently this time.

“My poor boy,” he said, his voice quiet. “I hadn't thought that that would upset you so.”

 _Upset_ was a pale word for what had been going through his head, but Crowley let it go.

“What the heavens did you think would happen?” he asked, wrapping his fingers fretfully around a fold of Aziraphale's trousers. “I wasn't going to be able to do that.”

Aziraphale hummed thoughtfully. There was a soft whoosh, and then Crowley was being handed a full mug.

“Don't spill, there you go.”

Crowley decided that he could deal with the small kindness and took a sip. It turned out to be chocolate milk with a better than average dash of Irish cream.

“Mmf. Thank you.”

“Just miracled up,” Aziraphale said dismissively. “I'll do you a better one sometime.”

Crowley held the mug between his hands, tilting his head against Aziraphale's knee. For the moment, the angel seemed content to sit quietly, and that allowed Crowley to think. Usually that was more than a little dangerous, but in the quiet of the bookshop, Aziraphale's fingers ruffling his hair and a mug of spiked chocolate milk in his hands, it seemed to be fine.

“I'm sorry,” he said finally.

“For...?”

“You know. For not be able to-”

Crowley drew his breath sharply when Aziraphale's hand grew heavier on the base of his neck. It didn't hurt, felt good, really, but it was a warning.

“No. Try again.”

Crowley swallowed, taking another hasty sip of his chocolate milk.

“I should be sorry, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Oh. All right then.

He thought for a moment.

“I'm sorry I didn't say something when I was getting all off in my head?”

“Mm. You might have handled that differently. But no. That wasn't a mistake, darling. That was you reacting naturally, and I would never be angry or upset or saddened by that.”

Crowley cringed. Why the hell didn't this body just let him shed his skin and move on with a brand new start, anyway?

“It's because I did the thing again, isn't it? Thought you would throw me over 'cause I made a mistake.”

“Yes. I'm not- Well. I know that has happened to you before. Please understand that I would never.”

The stilted and slightly uncertain nature of Aziraphale's words told Crowley how distressed his angel was. It made sense. Aziraphale had never fallen. There were no books he could consult on the matter, the same way there were no books that Crowley could read to really understand the depth and breadth and possibility of one angel's titanic and possibly obsessive love for him.

 _All we have is each other in this particular matter,_ Crowley realized, his heart aching.

He kissed Aziraphale's knee, leaning against him with a tired sigh.

“I believe you now,” he said, faintly miserable. “I believe you right now. I'll try to... to hang on to it when I have a more difficult time believing you in the future. I'm so sorry.”

Aziraphale took two soft breaths, more sighs than anything else. He leaned down to kiss the top of Crowley's head.

“Thank you, my dear. I forgive you. We can work on it.”

The quiet was soothing, but Crowley couldn't help squirming around on the floor. He thought about dropping down into his snake form and finding his favorite niche in the bookshop (right between astronomy and erotic poetry), but that didn't appeal. A thought occurred, he pushed it away, and it came back even more insistently. He pressed his face against Aziraphale's thigh, crowding between his legs as if that would actually protect him from his own mind. Hell, who knew. Aziraphale was magic. He just might.

The thought refused to leave him, however, and the more it circled his mind, looked out through his eyes, the more attracted he was. He could see potential there, certainly, something that would feed them both, that would make things more clear, perhaps even easier in the time to come.

“Darling? Whatever's the matter?”

Crowley bit back the first few lies, finished off his chocolate milk, and set the mug aside. He twisted around, kneeling up between Aziraphale's legs, heart beating fast. He needed to get this out in a rush.

“I want you to punish me.”

He had his eyes fastened on Aziraphale's face, and he saw that brief moment, that brief there-and-gone darkness, before Aziraphale stared at him in surprise. It wasn't that the angel was hiding something, Crowley decided long ago. It was more like there were some very dark and pretty things swimming around in there, and every now and then, they came up for air.

“Crowley, I have forgiven you. There's no need for...”

“ _I_ need it,” Crowley said recklessly. “I _want it._ Go on, angel. Teach me a lesson.”

Aziraphale smiled, but Crowley could tell that there was something just a little shaky about it. He was a tempter, _the_ tempter, thank you very much, and he leaned a little closer, tongue just barely staying behind his teeth.

“Don't tell me you didn't think of something the moment I said it...” he murmured.

“It would serve you right if I sat you at my desk and made you write lines,” Aziraphale said with a slight smile. He looked all right, but Crowley knew he had pulled back just a little, building up barricades not against Crowley but something he wasn't entirely sure about.

“I would if you wanted me to,” Crowley said, “but this is something different, isn't it? Make sure I don't forget that you love me. Leave it in my skin. Make me think about it every time I even _dream_ of forgetting how you feel about me. And then after, tell me that you forgive me. I'll believe it then, I think.”

He could almost feel the cracks forming, letting the light shine out. He leaned in closer until his face was just inches from Aziraphale's. _Nothing_ seduced people better than vulnerability and truth, and when it came to Aziraphale, Crowley had plenty of both to spare.

“Show me that I'm not alone in this,” he whispered. “Break a little. Just for me.”

***

Crowley didn't actually like pain. It was something he had figured out a long time ago. Pain had its uses, but they were far more limited than might be supposed.

No.

He liked attention. He liked having someone's eyes on him, totally focused, as if he were their entire world. He liked fast cars. He liked soft people. He liked getting taken to pieces, and he had a faint and nervous feeling that he liked getting put back together again even more. He liked verbal and emotional humiliation, he occasionally liked getting slapped until he teared up, he liked mouths and hands, and he liked penetration among other things, but pain wasn't a part of it.

Of course, _like_ and _need_ were two very different things, and as Aziraphale tied him naked to a handy wooden chair, he had plenty of time to think on it.

He could think about how little he could budge from the chair, with his hands lashed behind him and his ankles to either chair leg, spreading him out. He could think about how vulnerable he was, and how there was something almost foreign about his angel in that moment, moving so quietly and purposefully, not even humming or breathing.

Crowley felt a kind of peace fall over him, somehow existing peacefully with the nervous butterflies that fluttered in his belly. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He knew when it would end. He knew how how much it would hurt, and he had a good idea at least of exactly how much he was going to hate it.

He was excited about it too, and at some point, he was going to get around to figuring that out as well. Right now, there was just Aziraphale checking the bonds at his ankles, and then rising to kiss his forehead.

“Tell me why this is happening,” Aziraphale said.

 _Because I'm an idiot_ , was what he didn't say. Not that he wasn't simultaneously intrigued and appalled by being bridled, but because that wasn't the point right this moment.

“Because I thought you might not love me,” he said promptly. “Because I doubted you.”

Aziraphale stepped back slightly, and suddenly there was a black cane in his hands, a little over two feet long, just barely thicker around than a pencil. It was a simple thing, plastic of some kind, Crowley thought, but he could see how stiff it was, how it only arched slightly when Aziraphale bent it in his hands.

“This is going to hurt a great deal,” Aziraphale said. “Twenty-four, we decided on, with me determining the speed. I am not going to stop, not if you scream, not if you beg, until we are done. Do you understand that, beloved?”

“Y-yes.” He knew he didn't, but there was no other answer he could give.

“And when you are done, you will tell me how sorry you are, I will forgive you, and you will believe me. Is that correct?”

“Yes, angel.”

Aziraphale leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead.

“My darling boy,” he said adoringly.

Then he stepped to one side and brought the cane whipping down against Crowley's right thigh.

The pain was sudden, bright as phosphorus and immediately unbearable. Crowley cringed, gritting his teeth hard against it and staring down at the welt that appeared just three inches short of his knee. There was a strange disconnect in his brain between the pain that was just now pulling back and that welt that stood up from his skin. He was still staring at when that whooshing sound came again and landed right below the first, perfectly parallel, and this time Crowley shouted.

“Fuck-fuck-fuck, it _hurts!”_

“Of course it does, my dear. It's meant to be a reminder. I doubt you will be forgetting this in a hurry.”

Crowley started to reply, but then the cane came down again. You could fit the edge of playing card between the welts, but not much more, he thought. Strange how he could still think like that when his body was thrashing in its bonds, panting and in shock at how such terribly such a little twig could _hurt._

Aziraphale laid another three welts on in rapid success, so fast, that Crowley didn't stop screaming for any of them. Why bother? All he knew was that it hurt and it would not stop. _Aziraphale_ was hurting him, and he was both outraged by it and completely in love with it. Three in a row left him whining, and it wasn't until Aziraphale ran the tip of the cane over the length Crowley's half-hard cock that he realized how close the next strokes would be to that particular sensitive area.

“No, you can't...”

“No, of course not,” Aziraphale said calmly. “Not with this. It's too big, too hard to control. But something smaller, much whipper. A great deal crueler.”

The angel smiled.

“Maybe if you forget again,” he said brightly.

Crowley was still trying wrap his mind around that, so Aziraphale caught him unawares for the next two strokes. He wasn't getting used to the pain, he realized dimly, not with the pauses, stops and starts that Aziraphale was playing with. His body had no way to brace for what Aziraphale was doing, no way at all, and each cut hit hard, fast, and hideously painful.

Two more, and Aziraphale paused, head cocked to one side.

“Please, please, please, stop, stop, it hurts, please, I won't, I won't do it again...”

“Of course you won't,” Aziraphale said calmly. “This is going to remind you every time you think of it, isn't it? Being strapped down and made to take this awful thing. Being _helpless._ You'll remember this, won't you, Crowley?”

Crowley lifted his head to say yes, and that breath turned into a scream when Aziraphale slammed the cane down one more time, hard, breathtakingly close to his cock.

“There we are.”

That did it. Something about the satisfaction in the angel's voice mingled with the blinding pain broke him, and tears started to squeeze through his clenched eyes. This time there was remarkably little shame attached to it. No one in all the wide world could fault him for crying over this, not when it hurt so much, not when it felt like his heart was getting wrung out like a rag.

Crowley moaned when Aziraphale moved to his other side, touching the length of the cane along his left thigh. Something about the difference between his unmarked flesh on the left and the swollen purplish welts on the right made his stomach turn. For a moment, he thought he would be sick.

“I'm done,” he pleaded. “Please. I can't. I'm sorry. Aziraphale- angel, I _can't.”_

“Of course you can, darling,” said Aziraphale patiently. “All you need to do is sit still, and think about why this is happening to you. Think about what you did, and what you thought, and whether you will ever do it again.”

Crowley had enough rationality to know that of course he would probably fuck up again. It was something buried in him, and pain didn't fix it. Only time would, and love, and constancy. and the perpetual and eternal desire to please his angel and in turn to be pleased by him. He knew that even as he told Aziraphale that of course he wasn't going to do it again, he would never think that, never doubt him.

Aziraphale beamed at him.

“Oh, that _is_ good news, isn't it?”

And brought the cane down three more times on his right thigh.

Crowley thrashed, and the chair underneath him, even reinforced with a bit of sly angelic magic, creaked. He was straining against it, trying to get away, and that was fine. Aziraphale had said he wouldn't hold that against him, because it was natural to try to get away from this kind of pain.

“I don't expect you to simply sit there and welcome it,” the angel had said practically. “It will be quite enough for you to try to bear it however you can. I shouldn't think you'll be able to do anything else.”

He wasn't. All he could do was try to get away from the burning lash of the cane, from the calm and remorseless strength that Aziraphale used to wield it as he laid another three welts below the first three.

Three after that, and the noises that Crowley was making were unintelligible, nothing more than frantic groans and pleading whines. He had lost all hope that Aziraphale would stop for mercy or pity or kindness, and love was the reason he was doing this at all.

 _He would never, ever do this with someone he didn't love,_ Crowley thought, and _pride_ in the midst of all this felt strange and right at once.

One more stunning blow that Crowley could barely believe didn't split skin, and then Aziraphale was leaning down to kiss him, thumbing the tears out of his eyes, murmuring soft sweet things that didn't need to make sense at all.

“Precious, precious boy, all mine, perfect and mine.”

“Done now?” Crowley asked, his voice utterly shattered. “Are we... are we done?” _Will I be forgiven?_

Aziraphale stood back.

“You tell me.”

For a moment, Crowley had no idea what he meant, and then swallowing a sob, he looked down. No human could have left marks that clear and that even. The welts on his thighs were precise and perfect, and if he ignored what they were, put the vicious throbbing pain out of his mind, he could simply admire how deeply red they were and how lovely.

He counted, closed his eyes against the tears, counted again, and finally shook his head.

“No, we're not done,” he said in a small voice. “'S only twenty-two.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said warmly. “Two more. You have been so good for me. I know you can take them.”

It was a good thing Aziraphale was so sure, because Crowley wasn't. He was certain he was going to break to pieces, and that was before Aziraphale came to stand in front of him. The cane came up to measure along his left thigh, not parallel to the other welts but diagonally across them.

“No, no, no...”

“Don't worry, darling. You're almost done.”

Almost done, and Crowley hung on to that with everything he had. His eyes were shut tight, so all he knew was the whoosh of the cane tearing through the air, and then the utterly insane _splitting_ pain as it came down on skin and flesh that was already traumatized.

Crowley screamed loudly enough his throat stung, but Aziraphale only moved over slightly, touching the cane to the welts on his right thigh and bringing it down with identical speed and strength. The sound that Crowley made then was inhuman, just pure pain and desperation. He wasn't trying to struggle out of his bonds now. They were the only thing that held him in the chair as he sobbed, trying to make the pain into something he could even understand, not just raw sensation and endless hurt.

He opened his eyes to see that the skin actually had split on the right side, a very thin trickle of blood snaking over the curve of his thigh and down between them.

Aziraphale had come to stand behind him, undoing Crowley's hands before wrapping his arms around. Crowley shuddered as Aziraphale hugged him tightly, cheek pressed against Crowley's head, rocking him just a little as he wept.

“There, there, now,” he murmured.”It's all right. You took that very well, and I can tell that you are very, very sorry.”

He was, oh he was.

Aziraphale kissed his neck, nuzzling him as if he was something perfect and good.

“And I forgive you. You are forgiven. I love you so, and I wouldn't have done any of this if I didn't. I love you, and I forgive you. It's all right now.”

Somehow, that made him sob even harder, and Aziraphale had to undo the ties on his ankles so that he could simply end up curled on the floor. He didn't want to sit up for water, he didn't want to make his way up to the bed, all he wanted to do was to rest his head on Aziraphale's thigh and hang on to Aziraphale's hands, because right now, in that moment, everything felt all right.

***

Crowley woke up the next morning with a hiss of pain. The bruises on his thighs had become dark purple and blotchy, the flesh still hot and slightly hard to the touch. Now that it was over, the throbbing had turned into something arousing and fascinating by turns. When it caught him unawares, however, it was only bloody irritating.

 _At least I can just magic some clothes on instead of having to draw jeans up over that mess,_ he thought, suiting actions to thought.

Something occurred to him, and he spread out his wings, looking at them critically for the first time in ages. He was pleased to see new growth in some of the places he had plucked raw. Still ragged, of course. It would be a while yet before they were in tip-top form, but he could see it now. He pulled them back in with satisfaction, wondering at how clear-headed he felt.

Aziraphale had said he was welcome to stay the day before coming back to have his wings seen to again, but Crowley thought that he needed some time to be at his own flat, maybe having a quiet breakdown, maybe wanking himself unconscious. He was still figuring it out.

He smiled a little, however, at hearing Aziraphale puttering around in the kitchen below, likely putting together some breakfast, and likely, he suspected, trying to figure last night out for himself as well.

_You are always so beautiful to me, but when you're like that... well. I understand things I am not sure I should understand._

Aziraphale had not wanted to say anymore, but Crowley thought that at some point they would get back to it. After all, they had all the time in the world, and they were going to spend it together.

He raised his hand to snap himself back home, but then something caught his eye. He stared, and then with a muffled blessing, he threw himself down the loft stairs.

“ANGEL!”

Aziraphale looked up from a frying pan filled with eggs cracked into nests of bread. He looked... oh he looked perfect, and even then, Crowley wanted to kiss him or maybe get down on his knees and worship. He pushed that aside for a moment.

“What's...”

Crowley thrust his right hand up, turned to show the crude blue tattoo of an eye that certainly hadn't been there the night before.

“What in the name of holy fuck is this?”

“Oh. One of my eyes,” Aziraphale said, as if that should have been obvious.

Aziraphale's true form, enormous, perpetually burning, perpetually observant, looked out over the vast expanse of space. A thousand eyes peered and winked from the rims of four interlocked spinning winged wheels. Only now, it was apparently nine-hundred and ninety-nine eyes, because the thousandth sat like some bloody bad college idea on Crowley's wrist.

“Why!” Crowley demanded, and Aziraphale beamed at him.

“You always have such good ideas, my dear boy. You fell asleep, and I kept going back to what you told me yesterday.”

“I told you a lot of things yesterday,” Crowley said, unimpressed.

“Well, yes, but the part where you said you wanted something left in your skin. Something that will remind you. I thought that perhaps that would help along with everything we did.”

Crowley had to admit that having one of Aziraphale's eyes on his wrist would be one hell of a reminder to keep his hands out of his wings. Then he thought of what it was going to be like having a literal piece of the angel on his own body, and he shivered with the eldritch pleasure of it.

“Don't make a habit of it,” he grumbled. “That was a _weird_ way to wake up.”

“I'm sorry, I'll remember next time. Shall I do you up a bit of toast and egg ?”

“No, I'm off to my own place for a bit. You know. Things to do. Plants to brutalize.”

“Of course. I will see you tonight.”

A lump rose in Crowley's throat, and he swallowed it down impatiently. No reason at all to get all maudlin about that, about the absolute assurance that he would be seeing Aziraphale in just a few hours. That this was real, and this was not going anywhere.

“Yeah. See you tonight, angel.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *(points at “bad kink” tag again)  
> *(waves to all the Hannibal fans!) It's like seeing folks from the home village!  
> *Aziraphale feels about magicked-up food, no matter how nice, the same way I think some people feel about instant noodles and wine boxes.  
> *I wrote a lot of this section thinking “Why are you like this?” but I knew why.  
> *Earlier, I had this marked as done. Actually, don't think it is Needs a thingy. Coda.


	6. Chapter 6

It started late one afternoon four months later, one of those sleepy days where summer was little more than a ghost drifting through the streets.

Crowley had been napping in the armchair, now a permanent feature in the shop, and he came awake when something tickled his nose. For a confused moment, he was convinced he was still dreaming, and that it was snowing indoors. Then he rubbed his eyes and saw that rather than snowflakes (or as he thought for one horrid moment, scraps of torn pages), the air was filled with small fluffy white feathers.

He looked around at the strange sight in wonder, and then he stepped back to see the source: Aziraphale up on the rolling ladder, wings twitching slightly in deep thought. With every twitch, his wings- looking a bit worse for the wear, Crowley noted- rustled and kicked even more downy feathers free.

“Hey, angel.”

He didn't think he would get a response. Aziraphale had been trying to untangle a sticky organization problem in the upper shelves for weeks now. He only come down for Crowley's evening wing care and a few times, for Chinese takeaway.

“Aziraphale, come down, and look at what you've done.”

He smirked a little at taking that tone with Aziraphale. He had tried it a few times, with some fascinatingly mixed results. Of course, it only worked if Aziraphale could actually hear him, and that didn't seem to be on offer right now.

“Ought to be ashamed of yourself, really. Just throwing your feathers every which way like this, and you a grown angel. Positively shameful.”

Aziraphale made a humming sound to let Crowley know that he had heard him. He hadn't understood or cared, but he had heard him. Crowley felt the love rise up in him so fast and so hard that he could barely contain it. How in the world did humans even _do_ this, with their short little lives? He had had six thousand years of this madness, with no end in sight, and he _still_ didn't think it was enough.

“Last chance, angel.”

Murmur-murmur. Another brief shower of feathers. Aziraphale placed a book on the shelves, frowned at it, and pulled it back out again.

Crowley turned his wrist over. The blue eye tattoo was as vivid as paint, and if someone sensitive leaned close, they would hear from it the distant susurrus of an inhuman mouth whispering the great names of God, beyond ancient and very beautiful. Crowley had started calling it Stanley for want of a better name. Though he didn't like to let on, he was more than a little in love with it. Having Aziraphale keep a literal eye on him was a glorious kind of mindfuck, but it wasn't just that. It was a piece of his angel, his to cherish and love and keep him company on his long nights and his weaker days. And it definitely had its advantages.

“Sorry, Stanley,” he murmured, and he flicked the tattoo gently with a fingernail.

“Oh! Why!” came a distressed voice from above.

“Because you were ignoring me,” Crowley said. “Come down, angel.”

He watched as Aziraphale pushed himself away from the ladder to come floating down, saw the brief catch in the angel's descent and how Aziraphale glanced up in surprise before his feet hit the ground.

“You cannot think that that was pleasant for me,” Aziraphale said. Somewhere in the vast expanse of space, four interlocked winged wheels spun in a manner that could only be described as cranky.

“Beats pitching fortune cookies at your head,” Crowley said. “Look at all this.”

He gestured to the floor, and Aziraphale looked around.

“Oh! A little early, but not so much that it's a surprise. Wings out, please.”

Crowley liked how his wings folded out before he even thought about it. He hadn't been at them at all for two months now. They were recovering, but it would take a full molt to get them back into good shape. He turned to let Aziraphale examine them, eyes drifting closed at the familiar pleasure of it.

Aziraphale fussed with Crowley's wings for a moment, moving from one to the other with a satisfied sound. When he was done, he patted them to let Crowley know he could bring them in.

“Yes, you're going to start in a day or so, if not tonight. What do you say we skip the orchestra and stay in?”

“I'm always up for skipping the orchestra, but I won't stick around if you're just going to be up on your old ladder stacking and restacking your books.”

“Oh, I was thinking some cocoa, and perhaps some light reading for me, and some napping for you. Nothing too strenuous.”

Crowley cocked an eyebrow at that, grinning a little.

“Define too strenuous.”

“Well I'm sure we'll know it when we see it. After all, it'll take at least a week or two before we're quite done shedding everywhere. If we're already spending the week in bed with breaks for food and deliveries, I'm sure we'll be rested up for whatever you have in mind.”

Crowley had plenty of things in mind when it came to time spent in bed with his angel, starting with that nanny outfit he had squirreled away and ending sometime past the heat death of the universe. Today was a little different, however.

“Can I brush out your wings?”

Aziraphale looked a startled, and then thoughtful.

“Yes,” he said finally. “I think I would like that.”

***

Crowley ruffled his fingers through the soft baby feathers closest to Aziraphale's back, shaking out the loose ones so that the fledging feathers could come in strong and without obstacles. Laid out on his belly on the bed like some kind of enormous spoiled cat, Aziraphale only offered up a soft murmur of pleasure as Crowley put his feathers into order. The angel was stripped to the waist, revealing broad round shoulders that Crowley never saw as much as he liked, and now his back, Crowley's lap and the bed were all covered with fluffy white down.

_All these years I never knew we always molted at the same time... but he did._

“What else do you know, angel?” he asked.

“Many things,” Aziraphale said, as if that was quite a normal thing to say. “For instance, I know that you've slid one my secondaries into your shirt as if you thought I wouldn't notice.”

Crowley blushed a little. His memories from before the fall were shadowy and unreliable things. There were gaps there, larger ones than time would account for, but there were some memories that stood out like beacons. like carrying the shed feathers of angels he admired stuffed in his shirt. He wondered, in the intervening years, if it was something all angels did, sort of like human children exchanging friendship bracelets, or if it had just been him, weird and compulsive and a little too intense.

“I'll put it back.”

“Here,” said Aziraphale sitting up. “I can do you better.”

Crowley didn't understand what he meant until Aziraphale curved one wing around in front of him. His thick fingers ticked along the big primaries carefully, selecting one that was freshly grown in. When Aziraphale separated it out, Crowley could see the blood channel, rendering it darker at the shaft than the older feathers around it.

“Oh, hey, wait, don't-!”

Of course Aziraphale didn't listen to him. He pulled the feather out with the barest flinch as Crowley yelped in sympathetic pain.

“Handkerchief from the drawer, please,” he said, just the barest tremor in his voice.

“There are no words for the kind of lunatic you are,” Crowley informed him, fetching the handkerchief. “And I just want you to know what kind of mixed messages you are sending me.”

“Because you are such an impressionable lad, yes.”

Aziraphale wiped the feather's shaft clean and then handed it to Crowley. Crowley held it gingerly as if it was a sacred object, and then he twirled it between his fingertips. It felt heavy in his hand for a moment, as if freighted down with the labyrinthine nature of love and what forms it took. There were too many twistings and turnings for him to see at once, perhaps too many for him to ever truly understand. If he looked too closely, who knew what he might find in its sheltered paths?

Then he tucked the feather under his shirt, next to his heart, and leaned in to kiss Aziraphale firmly on the mouth. Aziraphale made a soft pleased sound, nuzzling closer to him. They ended up loosely in each other's arms, warm and tired,and smiling at each other's smile.

It didn't always need to be complicated, after all.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Okay, NOW it's done!  
> *They understand each other a little better now, I think.  
> *I think Crowley's always going to have some tendencies towards tearing at his wings, but both of them have some better tools to help with that now.  
> *Like Stanley. God, I love Stanley.  
> *I'm not sure Azriaphale's going to try to improve his consent issues. I don't think he sees them as a problem. Like, at all.  
> *Now, for real, I get to go write some Top!Crowley to balance things out.  
> *Anyway, thank you for reading, this was a fun and weird one to write!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Price of Feeling Better](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20298469) by [jellyfishfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishfire/pseuds/jellyfishfire)




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